Saturday Special - Collage, Collage, Collage

Hi Everyone, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I've been busy creating a lot of Collages this year. I thought I'd give you some in's and outs on how I create my backgrounds and Collage my pieces.

This Piece is in Honor of the Horrible Tragedy that Happened this week at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I just can't get it out of my mind.

Anywho I start out by collaging the pieces of Designer Paper. In this case I kept my colors soft and wintery looking.

Then I add some Acrylics paint to give it some color. Sometimes I add a lot and sometimes less to show more of the design of the paper.

I dry each layer of paint so I don't make mud when combining colors. 

Then I go to town doing my background.

I usually take a stencil at this point and spray some inks through the stencil.. I found out that if I don't like what is going on say it sprayed too much or I don't like the stencil at this point I can spray some water down and wipe off what I don't want on the substrate..  For instance when your spraying inks you can get this mist that comes down if your stencil wasn't close enough to the substrate.. I can wipe this off where I want to.

I heat set my stenciled inks. I found it makes them less water soluble.. They will not smudge as much.. They still smudge but just not as badly.

I add some stamping now both with inks and with acrylic paint.  I'll chose colors that go with my palette to blend the stamping in and also Black ink so it stands out. 

I use Archival Inks for this as if I want more layers it won't smudge.

At this point I might do some doodling on the substrate. Maybe some black acrylic circles, some marks, some borders .. Just get some doodling down..

another fun thing to do is to get a used toilet paper roll and put some paint on it and stamp with it..

The same with some corrugated cardboard.. There are so many household things around the house you can find to stamp with.

Now on this piece I cut out my trees using Designer Paper. I cut my first one out and then used that as a template. I could have die cut them also. I just didn't want my pieces for the tree to look totally perfect.

Glue down your trees and now to intergrate them into the piece.

First I will give some shadows to my trees by using a Pitt Pen.

Pitt Pens will smudge if your quick enough when adding the ink.

So quickly go around the edge and with one hand add your color and the other smudge it.

Then take some Black Acrylic Paint or you can also use a Black Pitt Pen and go around the edges again..

You don't want to be perfect about this. You want it to have that doodled look.

Now it's Rub on time.

I get some rub ons and randomly place them on my Tree's and on my Canvas..  I do the same with some stamping and mark making. 

Keep going until your trees are totally integrated into your Canvas..

I then printed out my Words and cut them up.

Now sometimes I might edge these pieces of paper with a Brown Distress Ink..

This time I adhered my words with Matt Medium and then took a Green Gelato and smudge it onto the paper with my finger.

Then I edged it with Black Acrylic Paint... Once again I don't want this to look perfect.

Time for more Mark Making on the trees and in the background until I felt I was finished.

and my Collaged Wintery Piece is done!

I'm sending this piece to Sandy Hook Elementary School

along with a card for my condolences...

If you would like to send a card to the school

here is the Address

Sandy Hook Elementary School, 12 Dickenson Drive, Sandy Hook, CT 06482. 

I Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year and please stay Safe..

Robyn