More collage

Today three of the Fibrecircle group tried another collage exercise. We actually did two exercises, with an optional third for those who felt energetic. The first was working from the imagination, using any materials. The first exercise was to make the house of our dreams. We painted the background of our piece with white acrylic paint, and added some colour, which we rubbed in with rags to disperse it a bit into the wet white paint. Then we tore scraps of paper and attached them to the wet background with gel medium. Some of us crinkled tissue paper and glued it on top. We all stopped there, because it was lunchtime and we were hungry! We had stamps and other media to add to our backgrounds if we wanted to, but no-one did. Later,once they were dry, we began to construct our dream houses, using paper scraps and tissue. The process was interesting because one person was working on paper, another onto fabric and the third onto a canvas-like material.Most people didn't get very far with this, and no-one finished, but it will be fun to see how these pieces develop.

While the first exercises were drying, we did another quick exercise using paper napkins. The brief was to construct "my heart's garden", working quickly with paper napkins. We coated our backgrounds with gel medium and then cut and tore elements from paper napkins to add to the background. We used some of the white layers to build up depth, and added paints to blend the images together. Here's how mine looked: I'm very happy with how it worked out!

Paper collage isn't my favourite medium, because it's so messy and often quite uncontrolled. I prefer working with fabric layers, using fusible web, and adding paint and stitch - very similar in style but much less messy! But it was fun to work with different media.

After everyone left, I started a collage journal cover, which was a third exercise, but I didn't work on it for long. I'll add some more to it over time, when I have the paints set up.
Nola

Later: Carol made this dream house: and this is her "heart's garden":

I am still working on my house, but, after going some different directions, it now looks like this: Nola

March Collage

I've finally finished task 2 that Helen set us in March. She gave us brown paper envelopes - no, not the kind with bundles of illegal cash! Each one contained an article from an Australian Geographic magazine. She challenged us to make a collage from our pages, on the spot.

I didn't want to make a paper collage, so I chose to collage onto fabric. It's taken me some time but I finally finished my collage.

I've talked about how I made it over on my own blog, if anyone wants to know the gory details.

Nola