Hot Ticket Tuesdays Presents Kerry: Chef, Fashionista, Traveler, Awesomesauce

So. Last week I dropped the ball. By the time Tuesday came rolling around, I realized that I had not interviewed a Hot Ticket. After smacking my forehead a few times, I decided that I would just need to make this week's Hot Ticket post that much more awesome. To make anything awesome, all you need to do is add my friend Kerry to the mix. Kerry is a fantastic chef, fashion maven, and world traveler. We met a few years ago through out husbands, and I was quickly drawn to Kerry's sense of humor and relaxed attitude. Kerry is quite a crafty and creative lady in her own right, and we've spent many evenings watching trash tv and crafting it up. (We need to have more evenings like that...)

In today's post, Kerry describes art inspired by her travels that she created for her home. I'm psyched that she chose to talk about these projects because I've always admired them. Also, if you want to get to know more about why Kerry is awesome, check out her blog, Cook with Kerry, in which she features one-of-a-kind delicious recipes!

Tell me about a craft and/or art project you made.
I travel A LOT. I caught the travel bug after I studied abroad and never looked back. I love reminders of my trips and often try to purchase art by local artists. But, I've also created lots of different ways to decorate my home using my own travel memorabilia.

My absolute favorite art project is the collage I made from all sorts of paper goods I collected throughout my travels. I put the collages in the doors of an Ikea bookshelf. I tend to keep all of these little scraps, maps, ticket stubs, post cards, etc. I especially had so many from my study abroad days that were just in a big box. Every time I looked through the box, I got happy memories, so I thought, "Why confine these things to a box?"

I also love the collage I made from photos I took at the Las Vegas Neon Museum Boneyard. It's the coolest place where they adopt old, retired neon signs from hotels, casinos, and other businesses. They give tours of the Boneyard and you learn so much about old Vegas and its history through these signs. I LOVE the colors and lines of all the different style fonts. I took a ton of photos when I was there and created a poster using Snapfish and a poster frame.

What inspired you to make it?

For the bookshelf collage,  I was shopping at Ikea and saw the bookshelf doors that allow you to "frame" something in between the glass and back. The idea just came to me to use all of these little pieces of memorabilia instead of something like fabric or a plain paper. I thought that all of the different pieces of paper would be bright, colorful, and interesting to look at -- plus it would be fun for me to look at and remember all of my trips and experiences.

With the neon sign collage -- I went on the Boneyard tour knowing I wanted to take high resolution photos for some artwork for the wall. I had a few ideas and just took photos of shapes, signs, and letters that looked interesting. I wanted to create something large to help cover my walls in an inexpensive way.

Did you come up with the idea yourself, or did you find a pattern and/or template that you used?
I came up with the ideas myself. For the neon sign collage, I ended up using Snapfish to help create the collage with all of my photos. They had an automated way of randomizing photos within the poster size that I wanted -- I was able to look at lots of different random mixtures of photos until I was happy with the layout. I’m not a great photographer and the key to this one was taking lots and lots of photos. The Boneyard made it really easy though – because everything just looks cool (and it didn't hurt we got a pretty sunny day with blue skies!)

With the bookshelf doors, it was a matter of sifting through all of the pieces I wanted to display and moving things around until I was happy. It took a long time to get it just right. As a background, I used maps of lots of cities I've visited and then just arranged the other scraps over the maps until it was pleasing to me.

What type of medium did you use?
Travel scraps, maps, photos, postcards. The Ikea Billy bookshelf frame doors. Cheap poster frame. Printed poster from Snapfish.

What did you enjoy about making this project?
Looking through memories and remembering so many great experiences. Also, I enjoy graphic design so it was just pleasing looking at lots of different fonts, colors, and shapes -- and fitting them together until they looked just right.

What did you think about while you were making it?
I remembered a lot of amazing and fun experiences -- I made the bookshelf collage many, many years after I studied abroad and so many of those scraps were from that time period.

For both projects, I thought a lot about how all of the different pieces fit together so that it looked balanced and interesting.

Were you doing anything else while you worked on this project? If so, what? (For example, sometimes I watch tv while crocheting.)
Watching crappy TV -- I'm sure. Actually, sadly, I remember exactly what I was watching when I was making the bookshelf collage. Don't judge, but it was back when Living Lohan was on E! I was watching that. I’m not even sure HOW I remember that since it was at least 5 years ago!

Were you pleased with the finished product? What pleased and/or displeased you about it?
I love both of these projects. They are fun and colorful and remind me of great times. They were relatively inexpensive, too, which is always nice.

With the neon sign collage, I think there were some limitations with using the Snapfish program and I think that it's not as perfect as I'd like, but overall since it was so easy and inexpensive, I really can't complain too much.

Will you make it again?
I'd definitely make these again! I still have lots of photos and scraps....who knows what other forms they can take!

Lastly, what is your favorite color and glue?
Pink, orange, turquoise -- really, you want me to pick? But, I always feel badass with a glue gun!