A trip to the card department in any bookstore or gift shop should convince anyone that collage cards are very popular these days. They are also rather expensive. Many cost between $4 and $10 apiece! Perhaps this is one reason why the idea of making your own has become so popular. That, plus the notion that they LOOK so easy to do. Even my American Heritage Dictionary makes "collage" sound easy: An artistic composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface. Humpf ... I can do that. It's just that word "artistic" that hangs me up, and it's that "artistic" touch that usually makes the difference between the cards in the shop, and the ones that definitely seem like they have been made by loving hands at home.
The "artistic eye" is not something one can acquire in a few minutes, however. There is some help available, in a new book called Crafter's Complete Guide to Collage, which gets down to the basics in language that I could understand and apply.
To give you a small idea of the kind of information it included, I learned that:
Some of the things you want to include in a collage are texture, color and depth. Looking at a card that I received last Christmas from Grace Taormina, who is a frequent guest on our show, and whom we all know has that artistic touch, I saw that it included all of those elements. The texture came in the paper: a piece of burlap and several glued-on objects. These objects - which included several buttons and a small wooden cut-out - also gave depth to the collage, and the color in the red and green of Christmas was obvious. I would guess that Grace didn't consciously give those three elements a thought. She just DID it. Now maybe I can too, but I'd have to think about it.
The book also stated that there are different styles. To simplify this you can break them down to color ranges....
The pastel or soft and gentle colors tend to have a light and airy feeling ...perhaps a more feminine touch. The objects selected reflected this feeling ... lace and sheer ribbon ... Earth tones and colors reflect quite a different feeling....textures like burlap would fit into this category ... then there are the hot, bright colors. Metallics and shiny buttons, etc., would go together. Mix a hard surfaced metallic paper with a piece of lace and you will see that it doesn't work unless you're a punk rocker, of course. The basic lesson there is not to mix styles.
There are also elements that go into the cards, and there is practically no limit here. Pressed flowers, little doilies, tatting, pine cones, wooden cut-outs, charms, etc. Apparently, it's OK to mix all the different elements to get the texture, color and depth, but try to keep the style consistent.
Because collage often involves layering things, something transparent, like sheer ribbon, mesh or acetate, is wonderful. You can even take a picture that has no printing on the back, and make it slightly transparent by rubbing it with olive or baby oil.
The main ingredient, however, is still paper, from which you can get some dramatic effects. If you have a piece of colored paper in which the color does not go all the way through, you can tear it so that the rough edge exposes the white underneath, creating a white border. You can also make your own by coloring a piece of paper and then tearing it. Watercolor paper works especially well with this technique.
All of the above over-simplifies just SOME of the information that this very helpful book contains. If that's more than you wish to get involved, but you would still like to make your own collage cards, there are several companies that have made it easy. There are kits that contain all the elements that go together. HOW you put them together is up to you, but at least they supply WHAT to put together.
Resources collage kits
Collage Studio
PO BOX 3455
Sunriver, OR 97707
Email:
PaperFiber@cs.com
rubber stamps
Delta Creative, Inc.
Website:
www.deltacreative.combotanical craft materials, paper, bamboo chair - Loose Ends
Loose Ends LLC
Website:
www.looseends.com
The Crafter's Complete Guide to Collage
by Amanda Pearce (ISBN: 0823002586)
Click
here to order this title.
Watson-Guptill Publications
Website:
www.watsonguptill.com Also in this Episode
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