 Hey guys, how are you today? We are here with another video for my creative year for October 2018 and we are here for the reviewer tip video. This month our topic is salvage, hence the pile of things in front of you. So we're going to talk about the different kind of salvage things that I keep and save and collect and why and what I do with them and I'm going to show you a few examples. So, so I save a lot of weird things. Okay, everything from flattened, well everything from bottle caps and these I have flattened with pliers and a hammer. I have bags of these. Two parts from old cell phones and old computer mice, buttons off of keyboards, a broken USB drive, dried up watercolor paint tubes, bread ties, little plastic bread ties. These are from a set of watercolor, watercolor water brushes. The Jane Davenport ones with the Inkenum and these protected, they were between the base of the brush and the tip to keep it from leaking and activating too soon. You to use the brushes, you had to take it apart and take these out and then screw everything back together. I thought they were interesting, so I saved them. I also have for larger pieces or the larger collection. These generally live in my bank of small drawers and if you don't know what that is a few months back I did a share your space video where I shared my art room and my bank of small drawers of small parts and that's where these small parts live, but I do want to sometimes save bigger things and you need some place to put those. So I actually have a salvage bin. Let's see if we can zoom out at all. There we go. So I have this big bin from Target that is my salvage bin. There's lots of different things in here. Everything from wood floor samples and tile to foam, silverware, plastic boxes. I bought some fake cactus to do a project with and this was kind of what was left over. I thought it was interesting. At least the box. I didn't want to throw it away, so went the salvage bin. These are the little cactuses that were left over. Children's building blocks, old thread spools, pieces of wood rounds, a flower pot, old vintage boxes from parts. This I actually found at the thrift store. Look at that. It's an old sewing kit. Scissor kit. It's pretty cool. So there's all kinds of things in here and some of this is from this thrift store or Etsy shops, but a lot of it is just literally salvage. Like this is from a microwave meal and I just I thought the bowl was interesting. I thought the strainer was interesting. It might be fun to do some acrylic pouring through it or see if I could use it for a stencil. There's all kinds of things, so I want you to take some time when you're just going through life and take a second look at things. This is a piece of window screen. I also save the little bags, the mesh plastic bags from like onions or the little cheeses, the little round cheeses. I can't think of what the name of them right. Laughing Cow Cheeses. So this is a piece of a hanger. So all these kind of things would be interesting to use in your art. And I'm going to give you some examples of what I'm talking about. Let's move this bin out of our way. So the 3D pieces are really interesting. And this is my studio mascot for the year. She's made out of a jar lid. Actually, a candy lid from a wedding that I went to where they favor was candy and a little tin. This is a doorknob. There are pieces of a spoon, an old key, pipe fittings and then random little art parts and like a crocheted flower. She's at least half salvage and she's pretty cute. So she lives here in my studio. You can also do things like, for instance, if you're cleaning out your supplies and you have all these old paint brushes because you're hard on them like I do and they're nerfed up and on their last leg, last year we did artist trading brushes and I have a whole jar of those. We all took our old brushes that were kind of past it anyway, decorated them up, added more interesting things to them and then traded them with each other. And I have a jar of those here. You can also use a lot of the flat things in artwork. So this is a piece of what I call halfway art. It's really just an embellishment with old book texts, some painy paper, tag words. This is a little piece of just leftover jewelry wire from another project I was working on. I was going to throw it away and I thought, you know, I'm going to stick it on there. This plastic that's been alcohol inked, that's from a takeout food container. I took the lid and I cut it apart and I decorated it with sharpies and alcohol ink. And then you can just take that and glue it to a page, a journal front, almost anything. You can also use these bits and pieces in your journals. I'm going to show you some specific examples. This is a journal I've been working on this year. And as you see, I did start actually the year, start the journal by dating the pages. And then as I got farther along, I just stopped doing that. That's not good. So here on this page, the salvage piece, I want to point out is this is just an old leaf I found in my path while I was out walking one evening with my husband. It was perfectly flat and dry. I thought it was interesting. So I came home and glued it to my page with gel medium. On this one, you're going to say, OK, what's salvage on that page? See all these bits? These are paint drips that were on my silicone mat from another project and they dried and I was able to pick them off and peel them off the mat and then glue them to my page. Here's another one that you're going to say, what's salvage about that? This literally is off a package I got in the mail. Here's another one. So here is a teabag. In it, I have a tag with a piece of another piece of product packaging, the clear plastic and a bread tie as a little tab salvage doesn't just have to be hardware. You don't have to think of like hardware and metal. It can be that, but it also can just be those bits of a tissue box or a the top from a takeout container. I drink a certain kind of tea that has a pattern on the inside of the box, which I'll show you here. So here's another page I did recently and this piece of cardboard back here. This is actually part of a teabag. And this is the inside. This is a piece of just scrap that I was going to throw away. So there are a lot of things you can do with salvage and found bits and pieces. So as you grow through your art and your life, I want you to take a second look at things and I want you to see if there's anything interesting about it. You might be interested in putting in your salvage bin and using in your artwork. I'm not saying save everything. Get yourself a bin of a certain size that fits comfortably in your space. When it's full, you've got to stop saving and use up what's in there. That's kind of an important key. Otherwise, you'll just keep saving everything. And here, just by the way, this is from an acrylic pour. Normally, I would have probably just thrown it away, but that's the kind of thing that it's just it's salvage. It's interesting. So think about it, take a second, look at everything and see what you can find to add to your salvage bin or start one. I'd love to see what you do. Leave any questions, comments or concerns in the comments below. If you're not part of the Facebook group, My Creative Year, and you'd like to be, click on my link tree link in the description below. When you do that, you're going to find a list of every single place I am on the Internet that you can find me, including My Creative Year, so you can go over there and join and share with the rest of us in the Facebook group what interesting kind of salvage pieces you find to use in your art. I can't wait to see. That's it for right now. Don't forget the most important thing. Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye, guys.