Here’s another collage of a fairy. I painted the canvas board with a pretty blue acrylic paint and then made a very watery wash with a darker metallic blue paint which I poured over the painted canvas, I tipped it back and forth to make the wash run and puddle up and then let it dry (which took awhile:)) I photocopied a tree branch from an old childrens book and colored it with Prisma colored pencils, cut it out and glued it to the canvas with gel medium. I also photocopied a lady who was sitting, cut her out and attached her and some butterfly wings ( a sticker) to have her sitting on the branch. I cut out a crown and punched a heart from silver metallic paper and added those and some tiny crystals for her crown and some glitter to her wings. The moon is a silver charm that I aged with some black Staz-On ink. Lastly I added a quote from an old book.

This was a really quick and simple collage I made on a 5″x7″ canvas board. I started out painting the board with a nice vibrant red paint acrylic and then diluted a metallic black paint with water and did a color wash over the red, I like the way that turned out. I then took a page from an old children’s book and cut out a house shape and sponged on some ink to give it an even more aged look. I then layered a copy of an old photo over top and used a liquid dimensional adhesive to attach a metal and glass embellishment over top, with a ribbon tied through the loop. These embellishment were made for scrapbooks so you could put inclusions inside, like tiny seashell, flowers, beads, etc but I wanted to leave it empty and use it as a focal point for the piece. Lastly I used my Clover mini iron (made for quilters) to melt some black crayon across the bottom and embedded buttons in while it was wet.

One of my favorite collage artists is Claudine Hellmouth, she has two wonderful books out called Collage Discovery Workshop Vol.I and Vol.II. I’ve gotten lots of ideas and inspiration from her and her books. Here’s a link to her website: http://www.collageartist.com/

In the first book she teaches a background technique using paint and Vaseline, it sounded crazy to me, so of course I had to give it a try. Here are my results:

It’s actually an easy (if not messy) technique. Using a foam bush I painted my canvas board completely with black acrylic paint, then let it dry. Honestly I got impatient and used my heat gun to speed up the drying time:) Then I used my fingers (this is the messy part) and smeared Vaseline in certain sections and then painted over the entire board again with grey acrylic paint and let dry again. Then I used paper towels and water to wash off the canvas board. The Vaseline acts as a resist so you get a cool looking background that looks like very old weathered paint!

I finished this piece by collaging on a photo of a woman I had photocopied and blown up using my home scanner/printer. I used gel medium to attach it, also adding some text from an old book. Then painted on numbers using a plastic stencil and white acrylic paint and finally finished it off with some old buttons.

 A word about canvas board, I prefer using canvas art boards instead of regular art canvas that are stretched over a wooden frame. I find them alot easier to collage on, they seem sturdier and stand up to more abuse and since they don’t “bow” in the middle I can put alot of pressure on them with worrying if they will tear. Plus they are less expensive and easier to frame.