My journay into collage

Awhile back I said I was going to start a creative journal. I spend hours each week looking at mixed media art. I have fallen in love with collages of quirky images, steampunk, and Victorian pieces . I have been playing around but I never seem to capture the moods I see other artists create. I needed instruction..how do they create those cool backgrounds??? So, I started looking for tutorials and books.

After a lot of researching I decided on a collage book and ordered it. I choose:
Collage Lab: Experiments, Investigations, and Exploratory Projects (Lab Series) by Bee Shay.
This book is designed to take you through a year of collage labs. There are 52 different labs in the book. One for each week.

When I was reading the overview of this book this sentence caught my eye..
"Seeing, Doing, Learning is the key to keeping the knowledge and information that has been acquired along the way"

I learn by doing..I can watch someone do something a million times, but, If I do not do it myself I remember nothing :o) I was really intrigued by the thought of collage labs.

The book was affordable (15.97 at Amazon) I read several reviews of the book. All were good reviews and I even found a blog that was doing her labs and posting their results. After they completed the labs they removed them from the blog and wanted you to pay 25.00 for the cd..

That is crazy I thought! They are making money off of someone's book. I bought the book for 15~ lol

Bee Shay also started a blog called Collage Lab Companion where she adds more content and takes you along the labs in her book. I don't know why, but she stopped posting after 3 months. But, I adored pouring over those three months of content..so check it out!

Waiting for the book to come, I started gathering supplies that I thought I might need. Gesso, modeling paste, canvas, acrylic paint, etc...poor hubby has been dragged to Michaels and forced to use a coupon..so I could get 40% off of two things! lol..I even signed him up for Michael's rewards! poor poor man!

Finally, yesterday the postman brought me Collage Lab (plus a few new "artsy" stamps I thought I had to have :o)..I poured over the pages and fell in love!
Each lab is clearly outlined...easy to follow, calls for reasonable (inexpensive) materials, and gives great examples!

I finished one lab this week..Basic Gesso Surface..all I can say is Wow...I can already create 9 different collage foundations!

I decided to create a collage for the Lift the AOW (Artist of the Week) challenge at Flying Unicorn. Bitsy had created a darling dress out of paper.
I had just bought the Material Girl Stamp from Crafty Secrets..so this challenge was calling my name! Here is my creation.



The background was made with acrylic paint, I used some gel medium to add an old pattern, and I added some texture with bubble wrap I drew the lines in the dress with a charcoal pencil and also outlined the dress with a little more shading.
The stamp holder is a stamp from Crafty Secrets that I stamped and then wound some yellow thread around it. I cut some ruler tape ribbon, added a little paint to it and also outlined it with charcoal to make it stand out a little more :o)

Check out the book..it's amazing!