Category Archives: Altered Art

Easy Altered Art Project

Wall Art Made Using a Thrift Store Find Plus Scrapbooking Supplies

Altered Art Project Made Using a Thrift Store Wooden Tray, Patterned Paper and a Clear Scraps Acrylic Piece Colored With Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks

Altered Art Project Made Using a Thrift Store Wooden Tray, Patterned Paper and a Clear Scraps Acrylic Piece Colored With Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks

Do you enjoy browsing through thrift stores looking for things to alter? I do! Here’s a quick and easy altered art project I want to share with you.

I love creating complicated, artsy projects — but these days I spend so much time working that I just do not have the time for it. I know that many other artists face the same challenge.

This is one of those projects where I let the supplies do all the hard work for me. I didn’t paint anything except the tree. Imagine that!

Altered Art Supplies: Materials I Used for Creating This Altered Art Piece. Not Pictured: Adhesive and Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks

Altered Art Supplies: Materials I Used for Creating This Altered Art Piece. Not Pictured: Adhesive and Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks

Supply List:

  • Wooden thingie from a thrift store — I’m not exactly sure what it was supposed to be, but now let’s just call it “wall art.”
  • Clear Scraps tree-shaped keychain mini album
  • Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks
  • Patterned papers — I used papers from My Little Shoebox and My Mind’s Eye
  • Die cut by My Little Shoebox
  • Letter stickers, logo sticker, or some other sticker with a fun slogan or quote
  • Adhesive

Project Instructions:

I made this project for the Clear Scraps booth at one of the Craft and Hobby Association trade shows, so it has a Clear Scraps logo on it. If you make a similar project, I suggest using letter stickers to spell out “Katy’s Room” or something along those lines, (substituting your child’s name, or your own name of course.)

  • Gather your supplies
  • Apply alcohol inks to one page of the tree album — save the rest of the album for other projects. Let your inked tree piece dry before doing anything else with it.
  • Cut out your papers and tentatively arrange them the way you want them onto your thrift store find.
  • Stick everything down using your adhesive.
  • Add additional embellishments if you wish. After I took the photo, I did a little bit of doodling on the papers, which made some of the elements stand out more. Wish I’d remembered to take another pic — phooey.
  • Done! Enjoy. 🙂

More Altered Art Projects:

About the Author: Amy Solovay is a freelance writer with a background in textile design. She has been crocheting and crafting since childhood, and knitting since she was a teenager. Her work also appears at KnittingandCrochet.net , ArtsWithCrafts.com and Crochet-Books.com. Amy sends out a free knitting and crochet newsletter so interested crafters can easily keep up with her new patterns and tutorials. If you’re already an Instagram user, Amy also invites you to follow her on Instagram.

This page was last updated on 8-27-2022.

More Art Journal Pages

Handmade Artist's Art Journal Page With Collage, Hand Painting, Block Printing, Journaling Blocks and Spin Art

Handmade Artist’s Art Journal Page With Collage, Hand Painting, Block Printing, Journaling Blocks and Spin Art

As you can see from my recent journal pages, I am still loving spin art. 🙂 For this journal that I have working on, I started out with a spiral bound journal made by Paperchase. Then I attached it to my turntable and did a whole bunch of spin art paintings on the pages. So now I am going to work my way through the pages and turn each of them into my journal entry (or entries, as the case may be) for the day.


This is a new way of journaling for me. I have been a paper journaler for years- I don’t even remember how long. I started in junior high school. I’ve been a blogger for a few years now too. It’s always fun to experiment with new ways of journaling, and this way has really captured my imagination.

I’ve also been enjoying creating journaling blocks for my scrapbook pages and my art journal. I am still experimenting with new ideas for doing that too. I think, when I am done experimenting, I will be writing a tutorial on how to do it. So please check back! 🙂

Update: Click here for more info about how to make journaling blocks using the block printing technique. The linked page also features a scrapbooking page which utilizes one of these journaling blocks, so you can see another example of how I like to use them. Enjoy! 🙂

Update #2: 7-15-2019 — I posted a new page about art journaling over at ArtsWithCrafts.com. If art journaling is of interest to you, I hope you will find the new article helpful.

Thanks so much for taking a look at my blog. I sincerely appreciate your interest!

More About Journaling

About the Author: Amy Solovay is a freelance writer with a background in textile design. She has been crocheting and crafting since childhood, and knitting since age 16. Her work also appears at ArtsWithCrafts.com, knittingandcrochet.net and Crochet-Books.com. Amy sends out a free knitting and crochet newsletter so interested crafters can easily keep up with her new patterns and tutorials. If you’re already an Instagram user, Amy also invites you to follow her on Instagram.

This page was last updated on 7-15-2019.