Sunday 24 May 2020

2020 #9 Merci Beaucoup with ESN {by Jennie Atkinson}

2020 Topic 9: Collage It



Jenny has given us a real treat in carefully dissecting the collage processes (both thought and physical) in order to show us how to build layers and what to do to make some layers more prominent, and knock back others. It's obvious that this is her preferred technique when creating as she executes it so beautifully.
~ Keren, Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Jennie (Live The Dream) here with you today sharing my love of collage! It is always my "go to" for so many projects and is invariably a reason why I buy a set of stamps as I can see their potential for collage and layering.

I also love to collage different types of medium and so in this piece I have used tea dyed papers, tissue paper, old text paper, gelli plate prints, texture paste and pieces of lace. Sometimes it is just anything that is lying around on the desk or in my bits box! For me half the fun of collage is finding random pieces that work well together.



I have used Sara Naumann's fabulous French selection on ESN43 and related stencil PS178. Sara designs are little collages in their own right but are great when stamped on different mediums. The first time I saw the feather I just knew it would be fabulous on tissue paper.






Every collage composition needs a good base and so I have layered some rather thin old French text onto cardstock. It was rather too thin to glue so I have machine stitched the edges. 



I do like to stamp images and play around with placement before glueing anything in place. Here you can see elements stamped on tea dyed paper and tissue paper. The tags had already been cut for another project so I added a little texture with paste through the stencil. Although I did lose some of this later and had to go in again in a final layer. But that is collage !



Once I have determined (sort of) my design I lay things in the order I have taken them off so I know which layer to do next. Some elements don't get used such as the butterfly and others get added in later to fill in gaps as I start to glue or machine stitch them into place.



Sometimes it is easier to hold things in place with a little glue before stitching.



I decided to continue with the machine stitching as it does help heavier elements to lie flat, which was particularly needed for the next layer.



At this stage the tissue looks quite prominent but once dried (I used gel medium) it blends into the background. It also mutes the colours in the gelli plate labels underneath somewhat, so they are less prominent. I decided to continue with the vintage theme and used Archival Potting Soil Ink but in hindsight a darker grey might have worked better. Despite using Archival ink it leaked onto the labels giving them a bit of an orange look when dried!



Once the tissue layer has dried I then added the final layers whilst trying to ensure many of the underneath layers still had some prominence.



I decided to emphasise the horizontal and vertical elements of my top layer clusters with some small pieces of wood. The little flower is made from some rolled up tea dyed paper and again just gave a little more focus to this area.



As mentioned above, I lost some of the texture paste elements when I layered the tissue, so I added another final layer of texture paste using the stencil. I love how the text on the stamped tissue looks so good over the stamped tea dyed paper.



I think the "1901" on the stencil is going to be used a lot! It just manages to pull some of the edges together in this layer.


I love stamp sets which have lots of little details which can be isolated from the larger stamps. This set has wonderful little coins, numbers, letters, tickets ..... and the stamps themselves are a super size to use on smaller makes such as cards or ATCs but big enough to have a punch on a larger piece of work. Both the larger stamps and smaller details are just perfect for collage composition. I think this is going to be a set that I will use over and over and I hope my project gives you some ideas for layered collage composition both with these stamps and others in the PaperArtsy range. 

As always thank you for joining me!
Jennie x

3 comments:

Miriam said...

This is truly stunning Jennie. Gorgeous.

PaperArtsy said...

Absolutely stunning Jennie!!

Sara Naumann said...

I love this, Jennie. Stunning work!!!