I am guesting at PaperArtsy tonight

Post updated 10th April 2014 to add more detail.


Hi everyone, I have a guest spot at PaperArtsy today and I decided to share my love of collage and making an extended tag. Those of you who have visited before are likely to have seen other ones I have made in the past

I outline 6 key design features that I focus on when making a collage and I hope to come back with some more at another time. My tag started with the gorgeous flower from the Hop Picks set HP111.

You can read more details about how the project came together over on the PaperArtsy blog and you’ll see other photos that show some of the steps.

I would love it if you could join me over there.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great evening (if you are in the UK).

hugs Brenda

I have 6 key design factors that I focus on and the decisions I made for this tag-

Theme – Botanical – flowers, nature, warm summer days.

Colour – browns, pinks and greens

Background – textured and layered.

Focal Point – Large stamp – flowering bloom, very dominant.

Collage Elements – border, sentiment/words, stamp - kept to the rule of 3

Composition – simple, vertical flow, unity of parts.

I have kept this tag with a basic design just to show you my starting points.

I started with just one key image which I knew would be the focal point and provide me with a botanical theme and feelings of warm lazy days of summer. My colour palette I decided would be brown, pink and green for the foliage. I stamped using plum archival ink and then set about colouring this gorgeous bloom. For this I love to mix products to create tones and shades of colour and here I have mixed Rose Fresco Finish paint and Aged Mahogany distress inks for the bloom and  Hey Pesto, Guacamole and Stone for the stem and leaves. I cut out the image, edged it with walnut stain to make it look more vintagey and stamped over the green areas. The last step was to cover it with satin glaze which makes the light shine differently on it, a provides a subtle contrast to the background.

I then prepared the tag, first covering the card with tissue wrap, drying it off and sanding the edges. With blending foam I layered over chocolate pudding, london fog and nougat Fresco Finish paints and again dried it. Over this I dabbed nougat and snowflake to lighten it and dried and then dabbed over rose mixed with aged mahogany to get some fabulous pinky tones. When this layer was dry I took a babywipe and knocked back some very small areas so that you can see the tissue wrap and lower colours come through, this really helps to create some depth and further interest.

Finally I used the harlequin stamp and snowflake paint to start to bring in some light pattern and over that I stamped these small numbers using black archival ink. This creates a great multi-layered background and is a fabulous contrast to the large and quite imposing bloom.

To finish I distressed and inked the edges of the tag and gathered just three collage elements (2 butterflies and 1 quote) to add to the design and keep the composition simple. Strategically placed to create a vertical layout where the eyes are kept within the tag up and down the flower and back to the gorgeous flower head. The paper at the bottom ‘grounds’ the focal image so that it doesn’t look as though it is floating in mid air and I purposefully placed the other two at different intervals to create more interest.

To finish and make this into an extended tag I used the new Chatsworth papers and cut a rectangle 9 x 19 cms, cut the top to be a tag shape and distressed and inked the edges. This gives me additional space at the bottom to add a sentiment, quote or more collage details and I used the lovely Lin Brown quote and another butterfly which helps the eyes move back up the project again.

Stamps I have used are

Ink and the Dog – Letters 5

Hot Picks – HP111

Eclectica – ESN07

Eclectica – ELB01