About the Recipe
Ingredients
2- 8.5x11” cardstock paper sheets
Glue- Hot glue, Elmers glue, the glue in the brown tube from the craft section in Michael’s, it all works!
Exacto Knife
Lots of natural elements!
Preparation
Going around Kaeng Krachan I learned a thing or two about bird watching. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of focus that my adhd brain tweaks out over. That being said, it’s an incredible practice in meditation and calming your heart rate. Much like fishing or driving through traffic, you never know what you’re going to see! While in Kaeng Krachan my small group caught glimpses of Rachat tailed tree pies, silver orioles, hornbills- some birds avid birders would spend their lifetime looking for. Isn’t that crazy? It really puts our passions in perspective.
Being a highly protected zone and the largest national park in Thailand, what fascinated me about Kaeng Krachan were all of the butterflies. Over 400 species have been seen in the forest, but what’s also interesting is that Kaeng Krachan is home to 8 large cat species. From Leopards to the Endangered Indochinese tiger, marbled cats to normal cats, EVEN Endangered Elephants in the WILD! There is so much life behind the leaves.
For this craft, I want to challenge y’all to go outside and collect little things. Leaves, sticks, wildflowers, anything that’s flat. Three, two, one, GO!
From there, take your 8.5x11 sheet of paper and start glueing on your natural pieces. Fill the page and overlap! This is essentially a nature collage, so look at the way the colors from the different elements can be put next to each other to tell a fun story.
Take a second sheet of 8.5x11” paper and and exacto knife to di-cut a shape in the center. If you need to draw out your shape first, go for it, but I always wing it and it works out! I’ll go with a butterfly, but you can do a silhouette of an elephant, maybe it’s as simple as a circle! Use your imagination!
You want to keep the four corners part and discard the shape because we are going ot layer the “hole” on top of the nature collage. Add glue to the backside of the di-cutted sheet and place gently on top of the nature collage. What you’ll see is a balance of positive and negative space, one of the main elements of design! The shape will be made up with natural elements whereas the border is a clean white to help the colors shine even more!
Thanks for crafting!
Mel