Sunday, May 15, 2011

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, so is a Dictionary.

I have been wanting to get my hands on an old  for a while now.  I mean, how cool would it be to craft using pages from an old dictionary? I had envisioned cool inchies and ATC's, plus some other mixed media types of things. 

I purchased this old guy from the Friends of the Library book sale in my town. I paid a whopping $0.50 for this. 
G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers
 Springfield, MASS., U.S.A.
1943

I am really glad I got it. I was flipping through it the other day looking at the pictures and thinking of all the fun inchies I could make from those alone. 

As I was wondering through the world wide web one day, I came upon a couple pretty cool pictures that had been printed right onto pages from old books. You can see one here.

A few days went buy and I kept thinking about the picture. 

Then I signed up for and received my partner for the Tree Swap at Craftsters.org


I didn't immediately put the two together, but once I did, "Hello new obsession!" 

Here are a few of the trees I have drawn in the last 2 days (it could be 3, I can't remember exactly).

The bird in this tree is the actual picture from the dictionary that goes with the word 'warbler'

I was attempting to draw birch trees, but they didn't really come out. When I asked Jared what kind of trees he thought they where, his reply was, "Dictionary trees?"

Not a favorite. I was trying to draw a weeping willow but I only have a vague idea of what they look like. Might have to do a research trip soon. 

These next four are a series. I actually started with the Summer one, they realized I liked it a lot. Once I added the nest, I loved the idea of seeing the nest in different seasons. 

Spring
Can you see the eggs?

Summer
Can you see the baby birds (there are 3)?
I drew the brown lines with my sharpie, but then lost it. I would prefer that they all have the same color brown, but I don't expect I will be able to wait much longer for the marker to turn up. 

Fall
Kinda hard to miss the birds in this one.

Winter
Bye bye Birdies!

Well, I think I might go look at some trees on the web and see what else I can come up with. I hope you have a great week!

1 comment:

  1. I love these! Very, very cool. :) I hadn't considered making an art sketchpad out of one, but it's a super cool idea.

    ReplyDelete

I love to read your comments, makes me feel good to know that people are reading my stuff!

Thanks!!