Best out of cardboard waste: Artistic use of trash!

What do you do with all the cardboard boxes lying around in your room? Like most people, you probably break them down and toss them into the dustbin. Fair enough! But imagine these cardboard boxes used for more than just packaging your online orders. Imagine a complete art being done using these cardboard boxes.

Yes, you heard it right! Anjali Rungta, the Delhi based illustrator, has been ensuring that no waste goes to the bin in her house. In this process, she has given new life to the art of recycling, by converting leftover cardboard boxes into beautiful art prints.

Artwork of Anjali Rungta

She runs her art page in the name of The Tiny Tumbler. “I had a lot of leftover cardboard boxes from the online orders, instead of throwing them, I wanted to mould them into good shapes. It’s something I passionately love to create and it also adds on to the aesthetic of my art,” she said. “I have reduced using paper with cardboards since I have found them as good alternatives for using paper,” she added.

During her visit to Auroville in Pondicherry as she was working on her Eco-dying project, she recalls that she was spellbound by that place and it inspired her to start re-purposing cardboard trash. “I was so awestruck by the place and I instantly decided to work on cardboard trash. "I just love the brownish natural texture of the cardboards and through my designs, I just wanted to adapt the concept of using Cardboard in our daily life”. She added.

One of Rungta's popular art print was inspired by hummus. I am not even kidding her print Growing Green was discovered through her sheer curiosity for cooking hummus with beetroot. “I made some beetroot hummus out of curiosity. I wasn’t as excited to eat it as I was to mix the beetroot in it to get that perfect pink colour. Looking at the combination of pink shade and the green colour of the jar’s lid made me imagine the print out of this combination."

Anjali Rungta drew inspiration from this jar

There are thousands of things one can do with these leftover cardboard trash either re-purpose it or recycle it, results would always lead to sustainability. Besides re-purposing cardboard trash she also uses other junks to create her design. Rungta further explores her art by repurposing an old matchbox by hand-painting and designing it on a recycled paper

Handpainted matchbox

Her recent artwork ‘Surreal vase print’ is an amalgamation of re-purposing handmade cotton rag paper and discarded flowers. “Few of these designs are so hard to achieve and I am always on the edge of my chair waiting for results to turn out well and in the end when I see the print it’s all worth the hard work”, she explained.

Surreal vase print

"My passion for repurposing objects and moulding them into various forms is not only my hobby but a routine for me now," she has illustrated her art on crockeries, bookmarks, stickers, journal.

Since the pandemic, she has been selling her artworks and prints only in Delhi NCR and she assures it is very well sanitized. Once the situation gets better she is willing to opt for global shipping of her artworks.