Fun Technique with your paper scraps

Hello!

This is Pallavi and today is my turn to share a technique. This month we are playing with pattern papers. I have to admit that I had a minor panic attack wondering what to show you. All our DTs have shown fabulous techniques with pattern papers, so I had to think real hard to come up with something new.

True to my style, I am going to show you a mixed media project from start to finish using the TORN PAPER COLLAGE technique. This is going to be a long tutorial, so sit back and relax.

Let's gather our supplies first , shall we?

You will need lots of paper scraps, Glue, Gesso ,Some paints, a design that you want to collage and a canvas.

Let's begin :

I went through all my paper scraps and chose some fairly neutral coloured scraps for my background.

Perform a dry run with your selected papers and decide on an arrangement which pleases you.

Glue down the paper pieces on to the canvas. I have used Studio Multi-medium matte. I also used  negatives of some die-cuts and  added some die-cut numbers for added dimension.

Let the canvas dry.
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Frankly speaking, I loved the canvas as it is ,but no, we shall plod on. Right now we are concentrating on the background, so we need to make sure that it's not too over-powering. We want the focal design to stand out. For this the easiest way is to do a white wash.

* White washing is nothing but diluting gesso or white paint with a lot of water and lightly brushing over your canvas, this will immediately tone down your papers. Remember, we do not want to hide the papers, we just want them to recede in the background.If you have used too much paint ,you can rub some off with a baby wipe.

I also did a wash of peachy acrylic paint and a  bit of flesh coloured paint, just to add a little bit of colour.

The next step was to do some random stamping on the canvas. Stamping really helps blend in the various elements of the background and makes it look  more consistent and not just random papers glued together.

And we are done with the background. Easy peasy, right?

Tip : If you don't like the stamping you did, cover it with gesso to hide it and start over.

On to the next steps now.

Sketch out a focal design/ image on to the canvas with a pencil. If you are not good at sketching, cut out images from magazines or trace them out. Remember to use a light hand with your pencil.

Now decide on the colour scheme that that you want for your design and bring out your paper scraps again. Tear your chosen papers into tiny pieces. We are not going for perfection here. The more ir-regular the shapes ,the better the effect.

I decided to go for various tones of browns for my tree and branches .(obviously !)

Start adhering your torn pieces to the sketched design. Halfway done ,and here's how it looks. I glued all my pieces with multi-medium but you can use any glue.

This is what the finished design looks like.

You can stop here, but I felt that the tree and the bird needed more definition, so I went around the images with a washable marker and blended the colour in. You can use your distress marker,watercolour pencil or paint for this.

I also went around the whole canvas and distressed the edges with some distress inks.I couldn't stop there and had to add some texture later with modelling paste and a stencil  and this is how it looks.I am not done with it yet.I like the looks of quotes on canvases, so this will have an appropriate quote on it too.

Here is a list of supplies

Distress Inks : Tea Dye , Vintage Photo, Broken China
Studio Multi-medium Matte
Modelling Paste
Gesso
Kaisercraft Stamp - 36
Crafter's Workshop Stencil : Tiny Circles
Archival Ink
Sizzix Alphabetical die

Hope you learnt something new with this project. Let us know if you have any queries either in the comments section or send us a mail at info@crafterscorner.in.

Do not forget to participate in our current challenge. It's easy and there are yummy goodies to win!

That's all from my end.Hope to see you soon.Happy Weekend!

Cheers
Pallavi