Collage Your Life

Piece Together Your Story
The simple craft of collage can be a powerful tool for daily self-reflection, a creative visual diary, and a fun way to enhance your journal writing or scrapbooking projects. Melanie Mowinski offers techniques, ideas, instructions, and 55 distinctive prompts to get you started. Jump into the joy of the process and use it to explore your life, stretch your creativity, and express your unique perspective on the world around you.

Inspiring examples from more than 50 artists

Contents

• What Do You Love?

Chapter 1: Build Your Materials

• General Tools
• Materials
• Building Blocks of Design
• Composition

Chapter 2: Develop Your Techniques

• Collage Building
• Other Techniques
• Low-Tech Printmaking
• Text
• Fabric, Feathers, and Found Objects

Chapter 3: Make Collage a Practice

• Begin, Again
• Find Your Voice
• Translation
• Patience
• What Holds You Back
• Go BIG
• One Size Does Not Fit All
• How to Change Your Mind
• Who or What Guides You?
• ASK
• Disrupt
• Play with Memory
• Find Your Antlers
• Use Your Hands
• There’s Never a Perfect Time
• I Know, I’m Ready, I Can
• Self-Portrait as Mirror
• Let Your Light Shine
• It Is Solved by Walking
• What Yes Comes from No?
• Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
• Envision
• Embrace Fluidity
• What Passes through Your Hands?
• Find Forgiveness
• Revise or Censor?
• Useless Anxiety
• Wander
• I Don’t Have to Do This, I Get to Do This
• Deliberate Practice
• Join a Challenge
• Strength Is Subtle
• Collage with Others
• Face It
• Open for Fun
• Walk the Line
• Build Slowly
• Accept Solitude
• Wait without Thought
• Only Connect
• Wilderness Mindset
• Send Some Mail
• Find Kindness
• Make the Most of Boredom
• Come Alive
• Tap the Power of Enthusiasm
• Focus on What Is Right
• Love Everything that Gets in Your Way
• Delve into Your Dark Nights of the Soul
• Reframe Negativity
• Show Up and Get to Work
• Let the Light Shift
• Follow Your Intuition
• Work Expands to Fill the Time
• Create Accountability

Chapter 4: Create the Container

• Making Your Own Collage Books

Reading List
Resources
Materials and Inspiration
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Index