Last Saturday at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, I took my second collage class called Mixed Media Collage with Kristen Rodriguez. During this class, I got to build on the basics that I learned in Susie Monday’s class called Your Brain on Creativity which I wrote about here.

While Kristen’s class did explore using fabric and grommets and whatnot. I, for the most part, stopped short of applying fabric or other three dimensional components to my design. We were given a kit with water color paper that had been prepped with Gesso.

This is the first new thing for me–if prep your paper with Gesso, you can put all kinds of paint on it. We then put a wash of acrylic and water on the paper. Next, we stamped it. I then went off in my own direction. I used the second acrylic and water wash to paint in my stamped chickadee. From there we used this handy adhesive to glue our collage bits down. I love this stuff. It is much easier to use than a glue stick and it can also be used as a sealant.

Here is my first finished collage from the class.

I kept going. Next, I made a sewing themed college. For my base, I used two pieces of card stock glued together. I painted both sides with the watered down acrylic. The medallion in the piece is actually made of fabric. I used more “prefab” collage stuff in this one than I think I will normally use.

Next, I cut out flowers from a magazine and applied them to another piece of water color paper prepped with gesso. Before I added the flowers, I added the acrylic wash. I really like adding that bit color to the base layer. I then used a BIC ultra fine permanent maker to make all those little dots in the background. I think that took me almost an hour to do.

And for my final college of the class, I used a sheet of card stock for my base and liberally applied spirals. The spirals are made out of magazine clippings and card stock. It was a great class!

Next up, I flew from Houston, Texas to Bloomington, Indiana.

And in less than 24 hours, I had my sister Regina’s kitchen table looking like this.

We have both been collaging away.

For my base layer, I have been gluing card stock to thin salvaged card board like this Ritz cracker box.

I have been prepping the card stock with Gesso, but being that I don’t have any acrylic paints to add to the card stock, I’m not sure this step is necessary. Here is my collection of prepped card board.

My sister generously gave up her DWELL magazine collection for the collaging marathon. I’m been focused on circles–or what I have come to think of as Pop Art Polka Dots.

Here is Pop Art Polka Dots #1.

Here is Pop Art Polka Dots #2.

This is my collection of cut outs circles.

I’ve also got a collection of chairs, squares, patterns, and words going.

I have no idea where this is all leading, but I am pretty dang excited to have learned about such a portal art form. Glue, scissors, substrate, found paper. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Happy Friday!

07 Nov This entry was published on November 7, 2014 at 4:04 PM. It’s filed under Collage and tagged Pop Art Polka Dots. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.