7 more ways (to add to the original 7) to use paper for great collage

If you follow me on instagram you may have already seen these, but I like to talk around them and I can’t really do that on instagram (well I could but most don’t so I don’t) and I’d rather use my website here to talk to you in a more personal way about the details.

In my last post on the collage pieces here, I may have mentioned that I started this journal deliberately just to do collage. I knew this was one of my strengths as an artist and I wanted to see how far I could go.

I don’t do traditional collage in the sense that I don’t draw what I want to create and then cut out the pieces based on a sketched outline. Instead I let the cut outs “tell me” where they want to lie on the piece. Oh this may vary a bit, for example if I am doing a face. I may draw the oval of a face and then start cutting the hair but when I do so, I just start creating strands of hair and I let them be what they want to be. See the face I did here.

What always amazes me is that, even though I say it time after time, it is so true that once you decide to commit to doing something every day, day after day - you do really see your growth.

So here, are 7 more ways you can use paper for great collage:

Idea # 8: (following up on previous post): Flowers look best when you use papers that already have a pattern in them. Yes, knowing how to cut out the separate petals of a flower is an art - and you can learn how to do this in my upcoming class - but the tip here is -use papers that have a floral or other pattern already!

Idea #9: Be inspired by line drawings you may have already done. In this case, a pencil profile of a face. What fun to add collaged pieces in the shape of leaves and florals to complete this piece. (Note: this was wildly popular on instagram - who knew?)

Idea #10: Just go for it. In the collage below I just cut out random shapes from magazine pages and went for it. In my mind, they turned out to be buildings - on the left and rock formations on the right.

Idea # 11: This is an interesting one. I had recently wallpapered my bathroom - see the before and after here. I had little pieces of wallpaper left over - (it was peel and stick wallpaper - bonus for collaging.) I cut up the separate florals in the wallpaper and created this collage. Not only that, but I then made them into prints, after playing with them in photoshop, and great news - I will be offering them in my shop very soon.



Idea # 12: This is a simple one that you may have tried before but I love it - it always works. Collage a spread using text pages (pages from a book or even scrapbooking paper that has text all over it). Add a few cut out florals and then circle words that mean something to you - simple and sweet!

Idea # 13: Sometimes things are just beautiful as they are. If you come across a spread that you just love, just paste it right into your collage journal. Here are two examples of things that somehow just spoke to me - I pasted them right into my journal and added a few details.

Ideas # 14: You can’t go wrong with black and white. Find as many black and white sources as I did below and try and make sense of them in a collage piece. I used paper, white markers and black markers to make this piece cohesive.

Tell me what you have been up to. I love hearing from you.