Remember summer camp and craft projects?  It’s that time of year again. Most Indicommons readers don’t get to spend a week in the woods anymore, twisting yarn around sticks, making sunprints with ferns, or gluing tissue paper to stones. So consider this post a virtual trip to the craft cabin. In this tutorial, we’ll make a set of four quick-and-easy cards with Commons images and a few ordinary office supplies. Never get caught without a perfect card again!

For my examples (above), I used the Field Museum Library’s wonderful World’s Columbian Exposition set, which includes prints, photographs, and ephemera related to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the “White City” where the first Ferris Wheel appeared, among other wonders. (Across the Commons, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian Institution have also posted images from the World’s Columbian Exposition.) But the idea can work for any images you like, so do explore the possibilities.

1. First, lay out two sheets of images: one for your backgrounds, and one for your foregrounds. For the background sheet, I copied and pasted the images of tickets from the Commons, in a collage pattern. Change the sizes as you see fit, and adjust the colors and contrast so that they’re mostly black-and-white (save your printer ink). For the foreground sheet, I copied and pasted an image of the Ferris wheel four times.  Choose a strong image that won’t be a huge hassle to cut out, and (again) you can adjust the contrast and colors for your purposes.

2. Print out each sheet onto white cardstock. Your pages should look like these:

3. Cut each sheet into quarters. If you stop here, you have eight postcards:

4. Cut the background rectangles slightly smaller (your printer probably left white edges — cut those off).  Now add a bit of color with ink pads, markers, pencils … whatever’s handy. Darker in the corners and edges, lighter toward the center, will usually give a good effect. Or you can leave the backgrounds alone and color the central image instead.

5. Cut out the central images from the foreground rectangles.

6. Use a gluestick or double-stick tape to mount the backgrounds to folded cardstock (I used some dark green and red scraps here), then add the central image:

That’s it! You’ve made four cool cards without a trip to the art supply store, thanks to Flickr Commons.

Clone Trooper: What? What are we looking at??

Powerhouse Museum	im.mick
ORIGINAL	REMIX

We found some creative remixes of Commons photos from Caroline, a.k.a. The hills are alive, on Flickr.

recriminations, by The hills are alive

I was thinking of this being a representation of moods of recrimination that flare up in relationships sometimes.

She created this witty montage using two Commons photos:

Library of Congress	Brooklyn Museum
ORIGINAL	ORIGINAL

Of her remix, the letter cast a pall over the morning, Caroline says,

… he’s a major, and I think that makes him very much like a fed agent. Same upright stature and gravitas.

Library of Congress	The hills are alive
ORIGINAL	REMIX

On the young explorers, she implores the viewer,

You are all welcome to come along too on an exploring expedition on giraffe-back … There are loads of them just waiting to be saddled up for another adventure. Please put generous quantities of lemonade and crumpets in your rucksacks …

Library of Congress	The hills are alive
ORIGINAL	REMIX

Caroline’s work is renowned on Flickr. Her testimonials tell the story:

Caroline has a wonderfully artistic eye for a shot and when that eye happens to be closed, she has the creativity to really make something from almost nothing. –Stevekin

Caroline is an alchemist, who transforms everyday sights into magical, beautiful, sometimes witty and always highly expressive works of art. She is also a great friend –*halbar

photocollage by larry&flo

Here’s a mindblowing photocollage by larry&flo, made using Photoshop and an assortment of Commons images — the artist assures us, however, that no LSD was injured in the making of this image. You have to really like an artist who has this as a testimonial:

Who else would show you dervishes whirling and ladybirds shagging?

This photocollage incorporates the following photos from The Commons:

Brooklyn Museum

George Eastman House

We discovered a fun set of remixed Library of Congress images in happysweetmama’s Flickr photostream! Enjoy Tweaking files from the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress	happysweetmama
ORIGINAL	REMIX

Americans are tough, and we’re going to beat this recession one repo at a time. Hang in there and be strong.
We are Americans!!

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C.

Library of Congress	brownpau
THEN	NOW

Reshooting an old image is great way to do a now and then series. But how about overlaying the then-photo within the new-photo? Check out Jason Powell’s Looking into the Past set on Flickr.

Looking into the Past: Union Station Square, Washington, DC, by jasonepowell

Library of Congress	pennylrichardsca
ORIGINAL	REMIX

Pennylrichardsca provides a creative twist on Commons images: suffragette purses! Now you can carry around any Commons image that you love — she provides a tutorial here.

pennylrichardsca	pennylrichardsca
FRONT	BACK

There’s a lot of creativity on Flickr. Members often share textures and backgrounds to create new art; they share tips on photo editing, too, to remix old works into new ones. Anji one is a master at melding new and vintage photography. Check out her latest work, See No Evil.

National Galleries of Scotland	anji one
ORIGINAL	REMIX

A Flickr video version of a stereograph from the Library of Congress that was converted to animated GIF format by plong.