Sunday fun: you should be making collages out of stickers
creativity for those among us who can't draw for shit
Are you a person who longs to be artsy but lacks any, you know, talent? I feel you.
I want to make beautiful things, but the results are usually… woof. My five-year-old is better at drawing than I am. My handwriting is fine, I guess, but I have no future in designing chalkboard displays for bistros. My baked goods always look extremely homemade. My french braids are wonky as hell.
Most of my creativity these days goes into Legos for my flower wall, but let’s be real: that’s just following directions. There’s no actual creativity there. Which is part of why I love it so much, but there’s still a tiny little part of my soul that cries out to express itself through terrible, terrible art.
Enter: sticker collaging. It turns out, you don’t need any talent at all to slap some stickers all over a page. And it’s surprisingly fun and satisfying!
I first read about sticker collaging in a post on
’s wonderful newsletter. In addition to the extremely important work she does — I was delighted to see her book featured prominently on the shelf of the nutritionist we’re working on my daughter’s ARFID with — she also shares little roundups of things that bring her joy. Her newsletter led me to this instagram post:
When I saw that, I thought, “You know what, even *I* could probably do that.” And I can! Mine don’t look as good as hers, sure. But I’m actually pretty proud of them! And they’re so, so relaxing to put together. And they use up some of the thousand blank notebooks in my home. Win-win-win.
Of course, the results are even better when you actually have any kind of artistic talent or eye. One time my friend Marina ditched her kids and came to my house, where we went up to my office, locked the door so my kids and dog couldn’t harass her, covered the floor with all my sticker options, and drank wine. It ruled. She’s legitimately crafty, though, so her creations were nicer than mine. I forgive her.
My kids really love doing them, too, and they seem to pick up new stickers just about everywhere they go, so their sticker collages are sort of like a little catalogue of their lives and their changing interests.
As far as obtaining the stickers goes: I’m lucky to have an amazing independent bookstore, Books Inc., within walking distance of my house, and they had a surprisingly good sticker collection, including this Big Book of Queer Stickers, a book of Dungeons & Dragons stickers that my son immediately used all of and an Antiquarian Sticker Book that I deeply enjoy. But my all-time-favorite is Pipsticks. Click on that link at your peril. I’m just saying: you might THINK you don’t need a bunch of stickers of wacky wild arm-waving inflatable tube men or bathtubs full of flowers or puffy bottles of hot sauce, but… are you sure? Really really sure?
And, since this is a newsletter about myth, I have to plug some of my faves: Flaroh (who drew the amazing Pasiphae mommy blogger on my “about” page!) sells stickers, and they’re gorgeous. I’m also a fan of these and these.
Happy stickering, friends! And if you got through this post without spending $50: props.
It's a thing I like about this stack...never know what will come next, but there will be a link to 'myth' somewhere in it and it will be interesting 😺