Hi everyone, Jenny here with you today.
This year on the blog, we have free rein to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product ranges of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring Gwen Lafleur's products.
Today I'm looking forward to sharing with you what I figured out when working out how to combine her beautiful floral designs with stitched collage panels.
Having recently read 'Fragmentation and Repair' by Shelley Rhodes I was keen to try some of her methods for creating interesting textured backgrounds that would further enhance Gwen's delicate, intricate images.
With that achieved the second challenge was to work out how to attach and extend the flowers to produce the finished panels.
Showing you the supplies needed for this project is tricky - important ingredients for replicating it include the Gwen Lafleur stamp set EGL27 paired up with a Sara Naumann stencil PS363 and PaperArtsy 'Snowflake' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint. Some PaperArtsy Printed Tissue (in this case 'Backgrounds') is also helpful when creating the collages.
For the rest I used leftover scraps of paper, card and tissue, so these colours would change depending on what you have in your stash piles. I would recommend having Mattints to hand, particularly 'Greenstone', 'Glow' and 'Squeezed' for altering your scraps, as will be explained shortly...
Normally I would start with creating the backgrounds and I had something vague in my head about a predominantly blue collage patchwork. However it felt like a better option to create the flower focal points first in order to decide what would look best behind them. This is particularly important when working with your leftover scraps as you have less control over what colours are available to you.
Start by stamping your flowers onto coloured card/paper and make sure to give yourself the potential to extend the original design by stamping extra leaf/stem sections. In this case, and purely by accident, the leaf on the left was added very close to the original stem - you'll see a line between the stem and leaf.
Even if you are not that close you can use a fine black pen to extend the leaf to join the stem. Then find a paint that matches your scrap and paint out any lines you don't want.
You'll see I cut around the flower and stem so it could sit on the background and had begun playing with an idea for the final project. Now use your Mattints to add extra translucent colour and depth to your flower and stem. The 'Greenstone' changes the original card colour beautifully with no need to re-stamp the images.
For this next flower stem you can repeat the process used for the last flower with paper/card in a different colour. I chose to stamp the flowers on a gel printed piece of tissue and the stems onto a painted piece of card because the stems are quite fine and I feared they would tear if cut from tissue. Stick the flowers onto the stamped stems once they are all cut out.
Again use the 'Greenstone' for the stems and leaves, adding in some 'Hey Pesto' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to add shading in places because it is also translucent. Admittedly you need patience when cutting these out but it is worth it. I did end up stamping and painting an leaf extra stem for this flower as you'll see from the finished collection below.
To more of the flower designs are relatively easy to cut out having been stamped onto scrap coloured card/paper but even I decided against trying that with the two most delicate images. Faced with these a good option can be to stamp them onto gel printed tissue/paper, colouring those image directly onto these backgrounds.
With a clearer idea of the floral focal points it's time to make the collage backgrounds.
Originally I thought about making blue backgrounds for the flowers but when laying them on those scraps it felt like the delicate detailed flowers would be overpowered.
What do you do with all the leftover scraps from projects? I save pretty much everything in stackable baskets, separating and organising by colour. So reaching for the 'neutrals' basket I pulled out a heap of scraps and tested the flowers with these - woohoo! That worked! You'll see from the photo that I've used torn rectangular pieces of fabric (in this case cheap calico) as a base.
It wouldn't be right to share all of Shelley's techniques here but in my case I found scrunching and sanding my scraps to be effective methods for making them more interesting. When building your collage backgrounds I would also recommend avoiding too many straight lines as this helps the edges blend together more seamlessly. Make sure to apply some of your PaperArtsy Printed Tissue over the top to add more detail.
If you like the stitched look but don't want to get out a needle and thread a great alternative (or addition) is to add some stencilling. This Sara Naumann stencil gives that look of stitched lines with minimum effort, again used with the 'Snowflake' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to help it blend with the background.
Now to add and extend those flowers. Keeping it simple with the bird and branch image use a black pen to draw the line down past the end of your coloured background. If you don't feel confident try drawing the line in pencil first so you can alter it at that stage. If, as in this case, your coloured background is on a piece of tissue I would recommend backing it with card first. This will prevent the 'lumps and bumps' in the background showing through the tissue, potentially distorting your beautiful stamped image.
Extending the stem on this flower takes a little more effort; draw and paint the extra length onto a matching piece of tissue/card, allowing for the images to overlap at one end.
Cut around your extended stem and attach it to the bottom of the main image - try curving the lines of the stem for a more natural look.
The same process has been used to increase the length of these flowers - attach the extensions to the original flower heads before arranging them on your background so you can get the look you want for the finished panel.
You can add stems to the stamped leaves in exactly the same way, with the added benefit of using the flowers to hide the joins. Alternatively stamp the leaves onto your choice of coloured card/paper and draw in the extension lines before cutting anything out.
These flowers and stems may have been the most challenging to cut around but layering them onto your background is very easy. You'll see I've followed the curve of the top stem to decide where to place the smaller flower stem. The last piece of leaf stem has been added to the bottom to finish the design.
Finally we return to the first flower stem stamped. I loved the contrast in colours of the more intricate images that were stamped onto coloured backgrounds and wanted to bring that to the other stems. You can choose to add those patches of colour either behind or offset from your cut out flowers.
One final method for extending the flower stem if your background is flat; stick down your cut out images, draw between them, colour with the same colours used for the original flower and draw in the lines with a black pen.
Finish your panels with extra stitching, torn fabric etc and they are ready for use in journals, on book covers, for the front of cards or even when framed as stand alone pieces of wall art.
And here are my finished panels;
Overall I'm pleased with the results and it has helped to put a dent in my scraps pile too!
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed in the first couple of process photos that I stamped and cut out a ticket from another of Gwen Lafleur's stamp sets EGL17. It was originally going to feature on the first panel but I changed my mind. Instead it could be nice to make some 'companion' collages in the same way using those images. Keep a lookout for those in the PaperArtsy People Facebook group in due course!
Thank you for joining me today.
Jenny
