Collage Journal {with Eclectica³ Sara Naumann Stamps by Designer Sara Naumann}

Hi everyone Sara Naumann here. Like you, I love expressing myself through stamping, collage and paper arts. Put me in a room with some ink and paper and I’m a very happy girl!

One of my other passions is words: Writing and journaling is what I (jokingly- but-not-really) call my therapy. When I designed these Eclectica³ stamps for Paper Artsy, I hoped other crafters would use them for cards, as well as handmade books, art journals and other paper crafts.

Whether or not you love to write, it’s fun to play with words as design elements—they can add vertical or horizontal lines to your piece, they can be the background or the foreground; they can state something clearly or just add visual interest.

For this journal cover, I wanted to use many of the words to create a collage in the foreground of my piece. I have 10 stamps on this 6” (or 15.5cm) journal cover! The words have been stamped on white tissue, then glued to the photo. It’s a really easy technique and a great way to get texture, depth and dimension—and incorporate your photos into your art.

1. Print your photo onto standard cardstock, or smoothy card.  My photo is an Instagram picture, so it’s square and already has a vintage effect to it. Be sure to let the ink dry completely.

2. Arrange all of your Eclectica ESN01 stamps on a 5”x7” Flexi Block. I played around with the positioning of this, using scrap tissue paper. After you’ve arranged the stamps, ink them with Jet Black Archival and stamp onto a piece of white tissue paper. Let the ink dry.

ESN 01

3. Use a foam brush to apply Mod Podge to the photo. Think of the application like fingernail polish—you don’t need a heavy coat.

4. Place the stamped tissue on top and smooth gently from the centre out. Flip over and smooth (you can also use a brayer). Let dry, then trim to size.

4. Apply white paint around the outside edges of the photo. I used Ranger’s Picket Fence, but you could use any white acrylic paint—the Fresco Finish Snowflake is a good option. Let dry, then ink the edges black.

5. Paint the front and back of two chipboard pieces white. When dry, glue the photo to one piece of chipboard, as the cover. Glue a piece of green cardstock as the inside of each cover. Punch two holes along the edge of one piece of chipboard, then align it with the second piece and punch again.

My latest thing has been making little books with pages that extend past the cover—it makes the book look really interesting from the outside! So this book is filled with tags, heavy smoothy pages and envelope pockets. I love using metal rings to hold the book together. It’s easy and doesn’t require any bookbinding skills, plus you can always add pages/envelopes and move them around if you like.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial as much as I did! As an extra treat I have made a video tutorial for this project which explains further all the above steps. 

I think a book like this is a great way to stash memorabilia, notes, ideas, sketches…just about anything! You can also adapt the tissue paper collage technique for a handmade card, art journal page or for other kinds of journals—the PaperArtsy Note Pad would be a good choice!

Thank you also to the lovely Leandra and PaperArtsy team for letting me share this project with you here!

Best wishes. Sara. 

A huge thank you to Sara from all at PaperArtsy HQ, it is a pleasure to have you joining us today, and such a treat to have a video too. This is a very cool little technique, it really does add great depth to the image. We love your stamps, they are so versatile and can be used in so many ways. We look forward to seeing lots of projects inspired by this post. 

If you would like to join in our weekly challenge with any of this week's guests who have blogged since Sunday night, then join in to link up your creativity HERE you will go in the draw to win PA stamps of your choice! You need to link your entry by17:00 (London time) Sunday 11th May 2014