“Little House” Collage

I posted earlier about my class with Claudine Hellmuth. I learned a lot from her about resist techniques. All the parts for this collage are finally put together! It’s a Little House!

I really love how this turned out. At first I was doubtful that I had cut all the parts correctly and it wasn’t going to come together. But it did! It involved hammering in about 50 silver eyelets. That was actually more fun that I thought it would be. Guess I had a little aggression to get out! Ha!

On the house at the top and the “M” I got a chance to buy and use Tim Holtz’s Distress Crackle Paints. They are amazing! It crackles as the paint dries in a lovely porcelain way. Really nice product! No more waiting for double or triple step processes to get crackle! Now I’m going to have to buy more colors! Can you tell I like it by the number of exclamation points I use?!

The bird image is printed directly through my ink jet printer onto the Sticky Back Canvas! I love that about this canvas. So many possibilities!

I told my niece that we would make a Saturday Play Date and make one of these together. I think she would like to learn about how I make things since she says she wants to be an artist like me. I want to encourage that as much as possible. She’s pretty good at drawing for her age.

Now I have to find a prominent place to hang this in the house. Might have to move something for it. We have a lot of artwork hanging in our house!

click images to see bigger over at flickr

Collage Class Parts in Process

Claudine Hellmuth tweeted on Twitter that she was offering a low cost online class for several mixed media processes. I am a hard-core fan of her work and books. I jumped at the chance to take a class from her!

The class was mostly mixed media resist techniques. The good this was that I already had most everything I needed for the class right here in my studio. I did have to order her Sticky Back Canvas and it was totally worth it. This stuff is the bomb. You can put it through your inkjet printer!! Canvas through a printer!! Did you hear that? That’s the sound my heart makes when it contains so much joy! As an added bonus it’s sticky on the back! Stick it to other canvas, stick it to itself, or paper, cardstock, the wall, anything!! The surface does not have a full coat of primer so it will absorb tea staining and glazing.

In this class, I learned how to make embossing powder resist the applied paint, how to make toner image transfers, gesso resist painting, and altering scrapbook paper to the color you want it to be. We also did some watercolor and used text from an old book.

It’s all in parts like this because it will be transformed in to a house shape when put together. And I’ll show you that when I get them all done and connected!!

(Don’t you love the suspense I’m creating here with my work? Ha!)