Decos and the art of deco making have been around for years, yet many people, even dedicated paper crafters, are not aware of this unique and versatile craft. If you’re interested in paper crafting, decoupage or altered book making, decos will be of interest to you. Or, if you are not a very “crafty” person, and are in search of a craft/hobby that will be within your abilities and fun to do, try making decos!
Decos are small booklets (usually between the size of a small and large index card), created from card stock, poster board or other sturdy paper products, and decorated, usually in a theme. The pages (usually 3 to 5 pages or 6 to 10 sides) may be bound in a number of ways, from a decorative brad in one corner, to lacing up an entire side with fibres, ribbon, even decorative grasses used for basket weaving. As you can see, a beginning crafter can be as much at home with deco making as the more experienced artist.
Pages are decorated using a wide variety of artistic medium, including images from magazines or your printer, paint pens, stickers, transfers, stencils, tissue papers and other decorative papers, and markers or glitter pens. Three dimensional embellishments may also be used, such as the specialized confetti used for theme parties, buttons, feathers, sequins, foam shapes and stickers, as well as any other paper ephemera you can think of! Try adding a business card that matches the theme you are working on, or a colorful tea bag wrapper, a candy wrapper, or some used postage stamps from another country!
Getting those postage stamps will be easier than you think, because decos are made to be shared! The point of a deco is not for the creator of the booklet to complete all the pages. Rather, the original artist will create the booklet and decorate just the cover in the desired theme. On the inside cover, she will add her name and mailing address or email address, along with any specific requirements for decorating her booklet. Then, the deco is mailed via snail mail to another deco artist, who completes the first interior page in that theme. She signs her work, usually with her name and state or country, and sends it to the next deco artist, who completes a page, and so on, until the artist who completes the final page returns it to its maker! The owner of the deco now has an artistic book, full of beautiful work by other artists from around the world!
How do you know who to send your booklets to? Well, once you have been “decoing” for a while, you will build a network of fellow deco makers with whom you can set up swaps on your own. To get started, it is easiest to join a group, created for the purpose of deco making and swapping. Yahoo groups has dozens of these, which can easily be found by putting the word “decos” in the search bar on their groups page. You will find groups of deco makers/swappers listed, such as Deco-Paradise, houseofdecos and deco-swappers. Some of these groups will be USA swappers only, while others welcome international members.
Deco swapping groups will have a moderator or moderators who run the group activities. Usually, there are swaps held on a monthly basis that deco artists can sign up to participate in. A list of themes is often voted upon and chosen by the group members, which then are offered for members to sign up for. Themes are varied and can be almost anything, from “Things beginning with the letter B” to “Summer at the Beach” to “Shades of Blue” to “African Animals”. Un-themed decos are also circulated, which allow the deco artists to choose any theme they wish for their page.
For some swaps, the deco artist will make her deco according to the theme she has signed up for, and will be assigned a partner to whom she will send her deco booklets (usually she will make either one or two booklets for each theme chosen). The partner will, in turn, send her decos to the assigned partner. From there, the decos go out in swaps to other artists and you don’t know where they have gone until you receive your deco home in the mail. It can take from a few months to a few years to get a deco back, depending on where in the world it travels, and how long each artist keeps the deco before passing it on.
It is also popular, however, to have “group only” deco swaps, where the rule is that the deco will remain within the group and only be sent to other group members to work on. Alternatively, “round robin” swaps are common, where there will be a list of artists, in a particular order, who have signed up for a theme. The deco then follows a path, is able to be tracked through the group, and is more likely to be returned to its owner in a timely manner. The key is to get lots of decos in circulation, so that you will be regularly rewarded with decos returning to you in your mailbox! (I have had decos returned to me as many as five years after I sent them out!) In the meantime, you will also be sent decos started by others for you to add a page to and pass along.
As you can imagine, making and swapping decos is a wonderful way to make new friends and acquaintances world-wide. Then you can begin to target your swapping to those whose artistic styles you like, and set up “private swaps” of perhaps five to ten decos at a time with your new deco-swapping friends. Deco makers also often swap samples of different deco-making materials with their friends, so that you can accumulate a wider range of artistic medium and ephemera to use on your decos, as well as sharing some of the goodies you have accumulated with others who may not have access to those materials.
Craft stores such as Michaels and A.C. Moore are ideal places for browsing and finding wonderful things to use in crafting your decos, but less expensive alternatives include department stores and dollar stores. Look in the scrap booking aisles for items such as card stock, rubber stamps, stickers, fibres, paper shape punchers, all sorts of markers and paint pens, and any other items you may see that could be used to decorate your booklets. As mentioned above, you can also find items around your home that can be used, such as magazines with pictures, junk mail ads, and small items like buttons that can be affixed to your page design.(Be sure to get a strong glue, as well as some good glue sticks, to secure your items to your page.)
Don’t forget to check online for other sources of deco-making materials. Search for scrap booking supplies and you’ll come up with dozens of online stores that will mail your selections right to your home. One of my favorites is a wonderful online store that has a terrific selection of paper items as well as three-dimensional items that are perfect for decos, called SkyBluePink.
You will have many questions about deco-making that this small article cannot cover, but if you apply to join a Yahoo decoing group, just mention that you are a “newbie” and will require guidance from other members to get started. You will find that most groups are full of helpful and enthusiastic decoers who will be happy to help you begin making beautiful decos and swapping them across the country and around the world.