Vintage Paper Collages

Recently I have been collecting a lot of ephemera which I have picked up from car boot sales, charity shops and used book stores. I thought it was about time I started to have a play with what I'd collected. I had also bought a couple of small prestretched/prepared canvas which I was planning to paint on but the thought of that still terrifies me so I thought why no try a collage. These were all just made up as I went along, I had no real plan. I think I like this making process, for me, if I think about something too much I'm scared to try something new in case I ruin what I've already done. That's why I think using recycle materials is great for me as well as I know i haven't spent huge amounts of money if it does all go wrong. Plus i love old worn faded bits of paper, it's like your giving them a new life. The picture bellow is the first collage I did it's 5 inc by 7 inc. I used some old music, part of a dress making pattern and some paper made from tobacco. I also love buttons and recently came across a jar in an antique shop which was calling to me so I thought I would include some to add some colour. I just wanted to play around with the composition and look at the positive and negative space left from the layering of the paper for this first one.



I was quite pleased with my first attempt so decided to try a bigger image 8 inc by 10 inc this time. Again I had no real plan but wanted to include some coloured and pattered paper. I also tried some subtle stamping in gold which doesn't show up well on this image. I also introduced some ribbion at the bottom with some ricrac for more colour. This image seemed to develop into a scene of flowers soaking up the sunshine which I love. This was all made up of recycled paper including the flowerd which were on the back of a letter from my band would you believe. They look quite retro. I do love the colour combos.

This canvas was a small one 5 inc by 7 inc again. I wanted to include a little more stiching on this one so started with a very simple background and started to introduce some vintage maps as well. I love that even though you are using very symilar technquies you get a very diffrent look to each canvas. I'm definatly going to be making more of these as it quite relaxing and you can really take your time building an image.

Felted owls and a Westie brooch

Well I haven't written anything recently but that doesn't mean i haven't been busy making things. I have been having a go at needle felting with some cute results. I touched on felting when I was in Uni and my sister said she really wanted to have a go so I thought I would share my knowledge and have a felting day. I now remember why I didn't carry on with the felting. It is hard work and quite time consuming with the needle felting. I did enjoy it but do think you need a fair bit of practice before I would be happy with what I produce. Here's the fruits of my labour, my little owl which kind of looks like a penguin as well.

It was also my mum’s birthday recently and she recently got herself a Westie called Pepper. I saw these cute buttons while I was on holiday in West Wales so I thought I would use the to make her a brooch. I thought I would try and give the brooch a cameo style look so cut the base felt into rounded scalloped edges and then layered some red over the top with ruffled blue and green tartan ribbon underneath and stitched it all together. I’ve been doing a lot of embroidered writing recently and thought I would add the words walkies onto the brooch so it kind of looked like park of the dogs lead. It was quite small but you can still read t. My mum was very happy with it and it’s got me to make a few more brooches which I play around with some new embroidery techniques.