Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Matchbook Cover Collage Tutorial

Back in 2006, my boyfriend and I bought our first house, an 1950's bungalow. During our first Spring at the house, we discovered a large (and I mean large) bag of matches in our little shed. The extensive collective had been left, presumably by the previous owner, next to an old lawnmower and a can of gasoline. For obvious safety concerns, we brought the matches inside and started rummaging through the pile. There were matches from Ford, motels & hotels, insurance companies, tomato sauce companies (with recipe printed inside the cover), matches made from spaghetti and the list goes on.

Initially I didn't think of crafting with the matches so whenever we would have smokers over at the house, we would offer a bag of vintage matches as a parting gift. After a few years, our pile dwindled down and most of our friends quit smoking so I decided to make a little souvenir of our discovery.




Steps:

With a pair of scissors, I carefully cut the front of about 50 matchbook covers. In some cases, I had to remove the back staple. This part was annoying since most staples were rusted. I suggest buying your frame in advance so you can roughly plan the placement of each matchbook cover.

On a 11" x 15" medium weight paper (made for acrylic paint), I glued each little matchbook in place using a regular glue stick while leaving only a 1/4" spacing between each cover. Once the glue dried, I place the collage in a double-matted frame I bought at Deserres (my new favorite craft store).


Here's a few close-ups of my favorites covers:



My favorite is "Tout pour le fumeur" which means "all for the smoker".

10 comments:

Sea Glass Designs said...

This is brilliant. And beautiful.

Charlotte Hupfield Ceramics said...

That is very original and a great idea, I love the vintage-ness! Your blog is lovely :)

Noel Giger said...

What a fabulous project! Thanks for sharing!

Sara said...

I LOVE this idea. I have a bag of vintage matchbooks that my mom acquired from an estate sale and I have some of them displayed in a glass vase. I have so many leftover, however, and I have been looking for cool pieces of art to display on a wall in my front entryway. This is perfect and thanks for sharing!

Becky T. said...

What a neat idea. :-)

tangente said...

Thank you for all the wonderful comments :)

Pink Rufflez said...

Beautiful!

Unknown said...

Very nice! I've been thinking about doing this...so I googled it and found you. I'll post the results on my blog if I do it.

Tiffany from HOLIDAY said...

I'm so happy to have stumbled upon this (via Pinterest). I have a huge matchbook collection and have considered framing them but wasn't quite sure how to do it. I love the idea that you cut them out so they lay flat. I am totally going to do this! Thanks for the inspiration!

Rebecca said...

This is fabulous! My husband has a bag of matchbooks that has traveled with us as we move from house to house, always ending up sitting in the dark basement. This would make a wonderful anniversary present. Thank you for sharing!!

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