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Thursday, January 05, 2017

Making Collage Material



This has been my ongoing project this past week. I've discovered a love for inexpensive brown kraft paper, the kind you usually find with the mailing supplies in dollar stores. It's the perfect weight and I like the texture it can give me. When I painted it with heavy body yellow oxide acrylic I got something akin to ultra suede. Nice! I've tea stained crumpled tracing paper and even used pickled beet juice here and there. I was surprised the beet juice didn't turn that funky brown shade when dry. Maybe the vinegar was the hero. Either way it stayed a lovely shade of pink.

I rummaged through a desk drawer and found an old box of white thumb tacks which gave me the idea to gild them. I wound up using both copper and silver composite leaf . I also embellished a few with alcohol ink.

I gathered a huge stack of old artist magazines and chose lots of yummy artwork to add to my collection. I also went through my purchased art papers and cut samples of each. I now have a palette  of papers to begin my collages and of course I can always add as I go along.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Painting your own paper, it is one of the most relaxing things to do, I think. :)
Sometimes I use them as backgrounds, but most of the times I use them as top-layer in my die-cuts.
You will find that many kitchenherbs can make beautifull dyes, like for instance turmeric. But I do not use them on paper because I worry that over the years they may dissolve the paper. I do not know, except I am sure tea does hurt the paper.

Billie Crain said...

Thanks, Cecile. I have SO much to learn. I doubt I'll be bored this year.