Sunday, March 02, 2008

Collage, Out of the Box Swap

I recently participated in an ‘Out of the Box ‘swap with my online quilting group. I had to take a shoe box and add some goodies to it and send it off to my recipient. Not content with sending a plain shoe box I decided to decorate it with collage. The ideas I took for a recent article in a ‘Cloth, Paper, Scissors’ magazine I subscribe to. The artist's technique I was following was Kelly Rae Roberts.To begin I covered the shoe box with a layer if gesso to seal and provide a ground for the paper to adhere to.

Once this had dried, the box was then covered with scraps of scrap booking papers using PVA glue to adhere the pages to the box.


Once the papers had dried the top edges were then sanded back with a small sanding block to make them level with the top edges. The lid underwent the same treatment.
I then covered both the lid and box with a layer of PVA glue to seal the papers making them ready for the next addition of paint.



When the glue had dried, an outline sketch of a lady was drawn on the lid with charcoal. The ‘flesh’ parts of the drawing were covered with gesso, again to provide a ground for painting. The wings also received some gesso to add texture.




The sides of the box received the same treatment as the lid. Small inspirational sayings were also added.





Paint was also added to other sections of the lid and lower box. The head and arm details were painted on. Once the paint had dried the outline of the figure was drawn in with a black marker pen.


When I was finally happy with the result the lid and lower box was covered, again, with a layer of PVA glue and left to dry. The final step was to add some highlights on the top of the lid with different coloured foils.


The box was now ready to be filled with a selection of stuff representing the things I like creating.
It was so much fun painting the box, the following weekend a girlfriend joined me for an afternoon and evening of collage painting. This time rather than a box we created small pictures on mat board so when finish we could frame them to hang on the wall.
To have a look at Kelly Rae's stunning work visit her blog site at: http://www.kellyraeroberts.blogspot.com/