Who knew you could do so much with a catalog!
Inspired by my mother's creativity in wrapping Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes in pictures, especially from old catalogs, I fell in love cutting up my old catalogs and pasting them onto colorful shoeboxes to send across the world.
First of all, let me assure you that I'm not one to part with catalogs - when I was younger, I'd sit forever just looking at them and making up stories about the dolls. Anyways, I chose some with beautiful, big photos in them and neatly cut out the pictures while my brother had his art lesson and I was waiting for mine.
To make a plain box beautiful, I glued down pictures on the lids, sides, backs, bottoms, and insides of some pretty colored shoeboxes (that way whatever showed was still pretty!)! I covered them with packing tape to protect it (and got really annoyed when there were those little bubbles. I ended up getting some good practice in and the last few weren't so bad!), and voila!
I love coming up with ways to use everyday items- or in my case catalogs - to help others!
If this was the first present you had ever received, would you like it? Covered in bright photos, filled with new, useful gifts from a different country, and best of all... a letter (you thought I was going to say doll, didn't you?!) from a girl across the world who didn't even know who would get the shoebox she packed, yet she spent time and prayer over it, packing gifts for a girl she would probably never meet! Most of these kids who receive the shoeboxes NEVER have had a gift before in their lives.
I especially had fun getting the full page photos and gluing them down!
This is only one of the ways that I use the catalogs! Wanna know another way? Keep scrolling!
Dolls in a Tin
Okay, so they're not really dolls in a tin, they're paper doll/ puppets on toothpicks with paper furniture and scenery!
Samantha and Addy, with a paper couch behind Samantha. I added some colorful yarn, paper, and fleece inside the Altoid tin covered in white contact paper.
I spent several hours carefully cutting these out, taping them onto toothpicks, covering the tins just right, and choosing furniture from the catalog that was the perfect size!
I liked this, with Addy in front of the gazebo!
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This is a huge passion I have! I can't wait to share with you more of the things that I do for this project - until next time!
