Merry Makewell Makes...: collage

Showing posts with label collage. Show all posts

19 January 2023

Romantic Parisian Tag

I recently completed a class on Creative Fabrica about creating a digital tag - From Paris With Love - Create a Romantic French-Inspired Digital Tag. I really enjoyed it and ended up with a very pretty tag that I really like.

The end result. I went a bit off-piste, but I like it.

All the materials that Traci uses in the class are provided and she explains everything really clearly. Despite the class being demo'd with Photoshop I was still able to follow along using Affinity Designer. However if you are using a program other than Photoshop it would help if you were somewhat familiar with it so that you can replicate what Traci does.

The techniques that I learned were actually super helpful in helping me to create the tag that I designed for this post. I will definitely be putting my newfound knowledge to good use and creating more tags and background papers. In the meantime you can download a sheet of the tag I created here.

To view the class you will need an All Access Subscription. The subscription allows you to download absolutely everything on the site with no limits! There's a great deal on at the moment where you can get yearly all access for just £4.59 / $4.99 a month (usually £26.99 / $29 per month). I'm not sure how long that offer is going to be around so get it while you can. Just head to the Creative Fabrica homepage and click on the "Upgrade Now" button on the blue banner at the top of the screen.

23 February 2022

Heart Flower Collage

14 days of hearts - no. 6

I had some background papers leftover from this project so I decided to make something similar, but on a heart base. I used a 100mm canvas board heart that I had lying around, but you could use any other type of heart substrate or glue several die cut hearts together to make a strong base.

PROCESS

Cover the heart in glue and then add strips of old book pages or newsprint background paper making sure to glue down any overlapping edges.
When dry paint lightly over the surface with white acrylic paint using a dry brush. The aim is to soften the appearance of the text, but not to completely obscure it.
Using a dry brush again, paint around the edge of the heart with black paint.
Cut about 16 pointed ovals (petals), each about 1-inch long, from coloured patterned paper.
Use a hole punch or cut a small circle from scrap card.
Glue the (petals) around the circle to create a flower shape.
Cut several smaller petals from the same coloured patterned paper and glue those around the centre of the flower.
Add additional petals in the gaps between petals (optional) to fill out the flower.
For the stamens cut thin strips about 1/2 inch long from yellow patterned paper.
Glue them around the centre of the flower (tweezers would be very useful here!).
Use a hole punch or cut a small circle from the yellow patterned paper and glue that to the very centre of the flower.
Glue the completed flower to the canvas base.
Cut 3 leaf shapes about 1 1/2 inches long from green patterned paper and slot them in behind the flower.

SUPPLIES:

Heart base
Old book pages or newsprint patterned paper. I used the Old Newspaper Textures digital paper set.
White and black acrylic paint
Coloured patterned paper. I used:

Scattered Gold Shimmers in Green
Pattys Desert Strips 3 Bundle (sample freebie) [blue-purple paper]
Glitter Digital Papers [including yellow paper]

21 July 2021

Floral Collage Canvas

So, you've accumulated a load of patterned papers (either physical or digital), but you have no idea what to do with them. At least, that's a problem that I have. I'm not a prolific card maker, nor do I scrapbook, but I can't resist a pretty patterned paper or an interesting background texture. So what to do? Collage, that's what!

I tend to overthink things and spent ages trying to decide what to collage. In my mind I felt like it needed to be some grand, artistic piece. But it really didn't have to be so complicated. In the end I went with a simple floral layout inspired by an embroidery design.

I used papers from my digital stash, but any papers would work. This would actually be a great project for using up paper scraps. I chose a newsprint, a pink paper with a a slight texture for the flowers, two different green papers for the stems and leaves, yellow paper for the flower centres and a lovely bluey-purple paper for some berries. I've listed links to all the papers used at the end of the post.

Step-by-step

1. I printed out three sheets using one of the designs in the Old Newspaper Textures set. The original file is a 12 x 12 sheet and the text was quite large. So I resized it a couple of times to make the print smaller. I tore pieces from all three sheets and stuck them down on the canvas board trying to get a nice mix between the different text sizes.

2. Using the pink sheet I cut a strip about one inch wide and then cut about 30 petals shapes.

3. I arranged the petals on to the canvas board to create 3 flower heads.

4. I cut thin stems from one of the green papers and various sized leaves from the other green paper, then arranged them onto the board.

5. I cut a few small circles for berries from the blue-purple paper and three yellow circles for the flower centres and added them to the piece as well.

At this point the collage was finished, but I felt like it didn't stand out from the background enough. So I went around the edges of the petals, leaves and berries with my Derwent Inktense pencils to help lift the composition off the page. I think that I might have overworked it a bit, but it does seem to have done the job and I still like the end result. (Original on the left, "enhanced" on the right.)