Saturday, August 15, 2009

Collage Papers

After my recent adventures with dying fabrics, I have been consumed with color!! I have been feeling the need to play and create colored papers and collage with the thought that I would create small journals to sell during the holiday season. You see, there is a method to my madness, I am thinking and working ahead to create some stock for the upcoming holidays while following my muse and having fun!! The planets don't align for me very often so when they do I MUST take full advantage!!
I wanted to ahve texture and lots of color but make things realtively simple. So I chose to start with gesso resist and acrylic paints. I cranked the above papers out in a couple of hours - these are the best ones, in my opinion but all will be used in some fashion.
Here are some tighter shots. (Left click on any picture to get a look at the details!)




This next piece is the large sheet of paper that I used to protect my work surface! I used sktech paper from a big pad for all of these. I just love the Serendipity of this sheet!!!

So I decided taht I would create another set of papers with simple bright color washes to complement the gesso resist papers and I would stitch the two sets of papers together n the sewing machine. This way I could avoid bubbling papers and not get everything all wet with glues. Plus the stitching would add more fabulous texture to each set of pages.

Next I had to think about covers for my little journals. I took some heavy watercolor paper and did some paint scraping and sponge work to come up with these two cover sheets.

All that I did was scrape paint over the surface using an old gift card. ( A favorite tool!)
For this next sheet it was all about color and a small sponge!

I found a sheet of collaged text that I had created awhile back and took the gift card and paint to it as well. There is a glare on this shot as the last layer that I added was a metallic blue. If you click on any of the pictures you can see all of the details, especially on this one. I will be able to get several covers from this one sheet.


Once I had painted up a storm, I took the frilled edges off of the full sheets of paper and saved them , of course!! Then I tore all of the sheets down to size and stitched a bunch of them together to create packs of pages with three sheets to each signature. (More on this aspect in a later post.)
After a round of stitching, I started to gather everything up and unearthed the bag of frill edges that I had put aside. I threw together a quick collage with the left over bits and this will become a cover as well. I think of all of the thigns that I created in this paint session, this piece is my favorite!!


So now I have lots of great pages all stitched for signatures, a bunch of painted papers yet to be torn and several really fun and different covers all ready to put together into journals. I have more work to do and I will share the finished journals with you very soon!!
have a great day!
Art On!!!!

13 comments:

Ro Bruhn said...

Great papers, I love the cover collage, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who saves and uses the edges of the paper, they look wonderful.

Judith said...

WOW Elizabeth.I bet yiou had fun playing with all your colours!The little journals should look lovely when finished. I adore hand dyed fabrics of all sorts.Puts me in mind of when my family used to have silk dyeing days!!

Jeanne Turner McBrayer said...

You have turned out some lovely painted pieces during your painting marathon! These will make beautiful journals.

Unknown said...

Great colors! Love the clothes on the line. Bright and cheery!

Anonymous said...

Love these... so yummy!!!

Jacky said...

Fantastic Elizabeth... love all of those beautiful dyed collage sheets. Your favourtie piece is my favourite too...cute!

Jacky xox

Beena said...

Your papers are all so beautiful! I love what you've done, and look forward to seeing all the creations you make form the papers! but the papers themselves are such wonderful creations!

Yvonne said...

Wonderful colors. Love to dye too. Can't wait for the finished journals.

Trina Lucido said...

Love the colors and the frill collage! Isn't it fun to create and experiement with no real goal in mind except to have a bunch of beautiful papers at the end? I also *love* the new blog photo banner ... it's so you!

Wildflowerhouse said...

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for visiting my blog. You asked about the colorfast on my flower pounding. I have pcs. that are 5 yrs old and still retain their color perfectly. I do use fabric made for dying, so maybe that is the solution.Plus when they are dry, I iron to set the color. Hope this helps. Looks like you have been a busy girl. Love you fabrics you have dyed. Sharon

kartika said...

Lovely! Thank you for sharing your process - aren't art journals wonderful? You are inspiring me to work on mine more often. Kartika

Jan's Art and Musings said...

These are great! Beautiful colors. They will make great pages for journals.

Robin said...

This post makes me crazy... I haven't painted papers for soooo long... Egad, it's fun!

I love all of them but especially the gree/blue sponge over collage sheet and the last one!

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