Saturday 5 May 2012

Mixed media collage

I just couldn't let another day go by without doing something creative so I shut my eyes to household chores that I had no will to do anyway and focused instead on my box of pressed flowers and leaves. 
Hiding myself away in my craft room and listening to classic fm made the perfect environment  for artistic play. 


I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. I have sheets of handmade papers collected over the years (I had a passion for papers at one time) and so I unrolled them all and marvelled again at their diversity then selected some sloshy handmade lokta paper in greens and browns and some white mulberry paper to layer on top.


I spray glued the layers down onto a 10 x 8" matting board to create a background and then opened up my box of pressed botanical treasure. Layer upon layer of pressed flowers and leaves collected over the years and stored in a cardboard box with silicon packets to keep them dry. Normally I would take great pain to select specific flowers and leaves, going through every layer in the box before being content with my palette. This time I broke with tradition and chose from just the first few layers, otherwise it would have taken me all day. All the plant material is from my own garden except the yellow petals which were kindly sent to me from Italy by fellow pressed flower artist Sylvia Barsotti.


Arranging the flowers and leaves onto the collage was quite easy but gluing them down was a bit tricky at times. Finally it was finished and I am happy with it, especially the sky effect produced by white mulberry paper on sloshy lokta. 


After scanning the original I searched for a suitable verse to layer on top of the scanned image and decided on the Serenity prayer. The image is now printed off and waiting to be framed and the original will go into storage. I decided to print off more images at 5 x 7" for card making. These images have no verse but can have a verse or a greeting added as an embellishment like the one shown here.


The scan could be better but its a good indication of how an image can be used in different ways. I will probably play around with it digitally, creating different effects over the coming days. It will be fun!


Hope you like :)

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