This article is written by Francesca Albini

Looking at the speed at which my paper recycling box fills up every week, I’ve been exploring various ways of making art with junk mail. The simplest way is to use it is as an interesting background for mixed media work.

In this picture of dancers in the woods, I glued torn pieces of coloured junk mail to a board. When the glue was dry, I sanded the whole surface to make it blend together more and take the excessive gloss out of the paper. I then added glazes of my home made pink gel pen ink. I also made a rough contour of the pieces with my ball point ink and a very dry brush. The trees are also painted with ball point ink. I gave the impression of grass with children’s green day-glo paint. Lastly, I painted the dancers in gesso and contoured them with a toothpick dipped in ball point ink. The sun through the branches is done with a yellow highlighter spread with a wet brush.

Another way of using junk mail is to cover it in gesso and then paint, write, collage over it. Of course, while junk mail is free, gesso is very expensive. So here’s how to make your own super cheap one. Next time you decorate, keep your unused water based white wall paint (or use white acrylic paint). Mix the paint with baby powder (possibly unscented!) and pva. Now you are ready to cover in gesso tons of useless leaflets. I make as much gesso as I need on the day, so I don’t know if it can be stored.

You can use the paper to make single artworks, or sew them together into a junk mail journal. I wanted to challenge myself here and decided to do a “Raphael” on a gessoed leaflet. I used washes of children’s gouache and was quite pleased with the way in which the support received the paint. I found it sturdier and more forgiving than watercolour paper, and I like the little bit of texture coming through the gesso.

Of course, junk mail can be used to do fun collages, as well. I seem to receive a lot of pizza leaflets, so I made a pizza-man out of them. The funny character was then scanned into the computer and given a digital background.

Enjoy your junk mail, and make great art with it!

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Francesca is a visual artist using pretty much everything she finds around her to record and relive feelings and memories of places and emotions. She collages, paints, draws, photographs. Francesca loves mixing modern technology, such as mobile phone apps, with the simplest of tools such as glitter glue, crayons and other children’s art supplies. Read her blog at http://franjournal.blogspot.com/

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