Creating Mixed Media Collages

Anjuli Johnson is constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her. It’s been an evolutionary process ever since she began her career as a scrapbooker. She is fascinated by collage; the fact that it can be found everywhere- in elementary classrooms, photo albums, crafting and fine art. It is used for many reasons- practicing motor skills, preserving memories, home décor, etc.

The term collage comes from the French word “college”, meaning “to glue”. Though it had been a technique for many years, the first mention of the term was around 1913 when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque drew serious attention to collage as an art form. Collage is such a versatile medium with infinite possibilities. In fine art, collage can be used to express different ideas through the different materials used- newspaper and magazine clippings to make political statements, blocks of color to suggest violence or the randomness of life, or even sections of old paintings and drawings cut up and reformed into something new.

We all have things that we try to hide from other people- weaknesses and vices that are embarrassing or compromising, or even accomplishments that we are anxious or unsure of for some reason- talents we hold back because of fear. The idea of hidden things has lately fascinated Anjuli especially those lurking just below the surface and whatever the nature of our hidden parts, they affect our outward natures, as well.

Collage and Creativity

The key ingredients in the work of Elaine Brady Smith who loves creating encaustic and mixed media art include vintage papers and hand printed collage papers made with repetitive marks, simplistic shapes, and transparent layers.She attempts to give you a tutorial on adding Collage and imbedding objects.

Handmade papers such as Japanese mulberry, lace papers, your own handmade pulp papers, and other natural fiber handmade papers are perfect for encaustic collage.Tissue paper is a good and inexpensive alternative, whether it is white, coloured, or printed. You can build up many transparent layers with tissue paper and incorporate your own marks by drawing or writing on it.

• To pre-wax a piece of collage paper for the Tacking Iron Method, place the paper on your palette or griddle.
• Pick the paper up with a pair of tweezers, and allow excess wax to drip off.
• When the pre-waxed collage paper is cool, place it on the surface of your art. With a preheated tacking iron, gently iron the piece into place.he process of using the tacking iron automatically fuses the wax layers.
• Once the wax cools, you can add more collage layers to your piece, overlapping them as you go.
• On imbedding objects some objects to add might be buttons, game pieces, jewelry pieces, and natural plant materials.To add objects, 
• Brush a small puddle of encaustic medium to the area on your art where you’d like to place the object.
• Dip your object into the encaustic medium and lay it on your hot palette to allow some of the excess wax to drip off.
• With a pair of tweezers, pick up the object and place it on the wax puddle on your surface.

There you have it!

Putting Poetry into a Creative End Product

Mixed Media Art has found a place in the heart of Leeanne Oschmanns as declares that a craving for harmony and balance in her creativity brought up the need to express her poetry in more than words. Merely drawing or painting a picture didn’t work because it was too stifling and usually limited the expressive elements to one aspect of the poem. However, the beauty of poetry is that it is many things and something different to each person and the same can be said of mixed media.

Since Mixed Media is versatile and diverse, the power of symbols and the beauty of texture and medium render a flexibility that is more difficult to achieve in styles of singular medium and subject. Sometimes a thought so profound that it should not pass can be symbolised and articulated with visual richness and subtle suggestion. This is the single reason why she recently felt encouraged to contemplate the 100th anniversary of The Great War by burning only a single light, preferably a candle, in the darkness. She has this strong urge to express her thoughts.

It is referred to as the power of creativity by use of words. Her passions include personal growth and understanding. However, people and animals complete her experience of what it is to be human. And being a poet is her way of shedding light on the things that seemed darkest or most beautiful. On the other hand the power of symbols and the beauty of texture and medium render a flexibility that is more difficult to achieve in styles of singular medium and subject.

Substrate Preparation

Elaine Brady Smith loves creating encaustic and mixed media art. Key ingredients in her work are vintage papers and hand printed collage papers made with repetitive marks, simplistic shapes, and transparent layers. Encaustic wax adheres to a variety of surfaces.It is important that the surface is absorbent and porous or it will eventually crack and flake off hence glass, plastic, smooth metals, and any surfaces painted with acrylic paint are not suitable for encaustic.

Good choices for substrates are: Birch Plywood, Regular Plywood, and Unfinished Pine and only if you are doing 2 dimensional works. The substrate should not have been previously treated with any oils or chemicals and as such it is good that you spend some time researching what substrate will best suit your needs and once you decide what type of work you want.

To prepare your substrate, encaustic medium or plain beeswax can be applied directly to most unfinished wood. If you are doing a painting, preparing the surface with a ground of encaustic gesso will enhance and give brighter colour results. Regardless of what type of ground you chose, begin your painting with a primer layer of wax on your substrate because the layers of wax cool very quickly as you add them and will remain individual layers. Through fusing process, the wax melts enough to bond with the layer beneath.There are many more techniques to discuss, but you can see that getting started is very simple. It is not beyond your reach to learn encaustic painting.

Working on a Painted Paper Collage

What Debbie loves most about Mixed Media art is that you don’t have to be an expert at anything to create beautiful art. It is a great way to recycle found objects. Art is also such a wonderful stress reliever. She loves to paint and do collage onto mixed media paper. The trick behind her work is to let go of any apprehensions about messing up a nice canvas or other expensive substrate and this trick allows her to work freely and just have fun.

Depending on the size of the paper, a competed paper collage painting can be cut to make smaller pieces of art and you can as well use the entire piece of art. Some of the materials Debbie will use in her work include pieces from a vintage ephemera music book, dictionary and calendar page. Deli paper will be added as well. Once papers are collage on the mixed media paper, paint is added and did a bit of stamping with a piece of cardboard that has been brushed some paint onto and pressed onto the paper. Thereafter she will mount the paintings onto wood panels.

You can also opt to buy clearance craft art from your local hobby/home decor store and use as your substrate. Once you cut your paper close to the size of the substrate, extra paper can be trimmed off after the glue dries. However PVA glue is the best to use and which you should add to the center of the substrate and brush it out towards the edges. Don’t put too much of glue or too thin. You can then lay your art onto the panel smoothing out any air bubbles.

Encaustic and Collage Art

Vicki has always been involved deeply in various aspects of creative arts. As such she is focused on sharing her journey to art and how life events can shape us through creativity as long as the piece has something new to learn. Though she has been a fiber artist working with silk thread and the smallest silk gauze for needlepoint, she has also been doing quilting and she brings below a way of making a quilt pattern created in deli paper and encaustic.

Materials include:

• Razor Blade
• Deli Paper
• Heat Gun
• Encaustic medium
• Ranger Tacking Iron
• 6″x 7″ Luan panel

Steps to follow include:

• Prime the panel with two coats of clear medium, fusing each with heat gun.
• Use template pieces cut direct from thin encaustic medium. Deli Paper can be used to rescue if there is a mess of pasta.
• Precut the pieces you need and dip the required number of pieces into the same color mixture so it would resemble print fabric. You can the mono – print each piece on both sides using tweezers.
• Put your work on a board and decide on size laser print you want for your collage. 
• You can now make the shapes you want. 

Once you have done all that victory is declared and the creativity moral to cling on should be “learning is the healing power towards creativity”.

Try Playing out with Different Colors to make Mixed Media Canvases

Learning a few basic techniques the amazing world of mixed media art is accessible to everyone according to Michelle G. Brown. Sharing your knowledge and techniques allow you to express your own creativity. Michelle loves playing with paints because they are relatively cheap materials and they come in lots of wonderful colors and gives her the ability to coordinate all of the elements she need to create many types of mixed media art.

With the nice looks on the colors Michelle tried to make a canvas and the following are the steps you can also use to achieve create results:

• Lay out the canvas panels
• Collect a range of ephemera and tear into pieces.
• Adhere to the canvas panels, leaving some pale edges overlaying the edges
• Cut off the excess ephemera with a craft knife and use a sanding block to smooth the edges of the canvas
• Get out your Gesso and an old store card or spatular and roughly apply a layer of Gesso over the dried ephemera layer. Leave to dry.
• Add a layer of bone coloured acrylic paint, then a little ivory white and then a layer of yellow as a wash.

While the canvas panels are drying, get set up to create some color coordinated papers to add to the canvas panels. This is the advantage of using paints where you can make your entire bits and pieces match. You ought to understand the creativity within you.

Making Soft Pastel, Collage and Encaustic

Vicki has always been involved deeply in the creative arts, from professional soft crafts publications (knitting/crochet/needlework) to French Hand-sewing, stenciling to macramé, oil painting to encaustics. Never the less she is still focused on sharing her journey to art and how life events can shape us through creativity. The following are the materials she uses:

• 12″x 9″ Luan panel
• R&F encaustic gesso
• Deli Paper (thank you mixed media artists)
• soft pastels
• gold leaf
• encaustic medium
• Razor Blade
• Ranger Tacking Iron
• Heat Gun
• Prime the panel with two coats of clear medium, fusing each with heat gun. Alternating a Ranger tacking iron, scraping with a razor blade, and fusing with the heat gunmake the surface smooth. 
• Lay a layer of tinted medium (melted with scrapings from the early pieces.
• Gently heat the prepared panel with the heat gun, align and place the deli paper pastel side down, and burnish it carefully and thoroughly.
• Carefully remove the deli paper from the panel.
• Gently warm the surface with the heat gun and carefully position the deli paper with the ghost image pastel side up this time, creating a mirror image.
• With the heat gun again, warm the paper. The underlying layers of encaustic medium will encapsulate the paper, rendering it almost invisible.
• Carve a circular halo, add more touches of gold leaf

There you have your image.

Making Collages that will Remind of your Family History

According to Anjuli Johnson who is a Mixed Media Artist form Raleigh, NC, you should not be afraid to showcase your family history through art. She advises that you Collect your family’s primary documents, make copies and scans and do something with your family’s memories that will spark interest and ensure that those memories are remembered and cherished, never misplaced or forgotten.

She did want to immortalize that truth and make sure that the memories of her father through letters to his family while he was a young missionary in Mexico in 1974-1975 were not ruined. Seeing his handwriting, the little tidbits he had collected, the replies his parents sent him, pictures, etc. were just like a window to the past. It sounds so tedious, but going through those letters and certificates and seeing the names of actual people, their handwriting, and the tiny portions of their lives was fascinating. She finally created a collage about his father which was more vintage looking. The nature of the elements she used for it, and the fact that they are 30 years older added to the amazing look.

She says She began her art career as a scrapbooker, and it’s been an evolutionary process ever since. However she is still constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her.