Artsy Collages

Lately I’ve felt more like being artistic than crafty. I don’t know if it’s a desire to express myself or if I just want to play around- maybe both- but I’ve had some fun experimenting with collage and mixed media.

I started with the large envelope my Shutterfly order came in. Weird, yeah, but it was destined for the trash and it was a nice thick poster board material that looked like it could handle an onslaught of mod podge. 

Once I had my base, I started looking through old magazines. My goal for this piece was to do something fall-ish, maybe Thanksgiving-y. So I found lots of reds, greens, golds, and browns and started throwing them on there.

I was using home decorating magazines, so the images I got were full of texture- blankets, pillows, flooring, rugs, and flowers.

I mod podged them together, then once it dried I used a little cream colored acrylic paint and dry-brushed some character onto it. Then I used my Quickutz and punched “give thanks” out of old sheet music. Once it dried I outlined the letters with a fine tip Sharpie.

Next was this little gem.

This one was basically the same process (same Shutterfly envelope, same home decorating magazines) only I went with a girly shabby chic feel, inspired by one of the textures I hadn’t ended up using for my “give thanks” collage.

I went over everything with the same cream acrylic paint and then used some brown ink on the edges once it dried. Then I added a few touches of lace, some twine, a velvet flower and a button.

One of my favorite things about this one is that one of the images I used was a window looking out on a flowering tree, and you can just barely still see it in the background. It gives a soft, dreamy feel to it.

So that was my artsiness from yesterday. How about you- feeling artsy lately?