Fast Forward to Now (for the love of collages)

13 Oct Fast Forward to Now (for the love of collages)

Love this collage? Download it HERE!

For most of my teen-age years (and long into my 20s) I made collages. My bedroom floor was covered with stacks of magazine’s, clippings, tear outs, journals, spiral notebooks and binders. Everything, and I mean everything, was collaged. I had my favorite models, subjects, themes, colors and words. From Seventeen Magazine to Surfer, Glamour to GQ (omg- remember GQ?) I coveted every page and then painstakingly yet tenderly cut out each picture for yet another collage. Scissors, glue, tape, posterboard, construction paper; all the old school tools.

Fast forward to now as my daughter is a mere month away from becoming a teen-ager and what is one of her favorite things to do ever? Making collages. Nothing has changed I guess. Except everything. See, my daughter rarely uses the old school tools of my youth. Collaging these days has gone digital. And although you might think I’d be lamenting about the good old days of paper and scissors, I am in awe of the amazing and creative tools now available. Like wow!

Polyvore is one of the coolest collage making sites EVER and it’s by far her favorite site to spend time on. Her collages are so creative; a unique mix of fashion, fun and flirty, far more sophisticated and compositionally compelling than any of my collages ever were. There is no doubt, if I were her age, I would camp out at Polyvore too.

Recently, when Today’s Mama and Avery teamed up to promote the Avery on Zazzle binder opportunity I knew my daughter would love to design her very own back to school photo binder. I know I enjoyed designing my own! It didn’t surprise me at all when she thought to use her collage work for her cover. Her final design (featured above) is totally adorable. We worked together on the project but the collages are all her! It has been so fun for me to watch her collage digitally, digging through the volumes of lovely images on the site, dragging and dropping to create unique, artistic creations that express her point of view.

My daughter (aka Awesome Girl) would like to share her back-to-school binder design with all of you. If you would like to use her collage to order a photo binder from Avery on Zazzle, you can click HERE to download the image. You then pop over to the binder site and upload it to the cover of the binder of your choice. She really hopes you enjoy the final product as much as she enjoyed making it. She shared a number of posts on her blog (Everything Awesome, what else?) this summer featuring her process, one collage at a time. Needless to say, I am beaming with pride. Like mother like daughter.

*sigh*

Be sure to leave a little message over there for her in the comments of her blog. She worked really hard on this project and I would be so grateful if you gave her a virtual pat on the back.