Collage Basics lesson 6

Once again our teacher Mary has challenged us during the Collage Basics class, to make a spread using real vintage materials only. This is always hard for a hoarder like I am. I seem to want to cling on to it all despite already possessing more vintage books and materials than I'm likely to use up in a lifetime. Which is why I like it when teacher tells me to just get on with it!

The background for this page has been torn from Debretts, the guide to the British aristocracy. The volume I have in my possession dates back to the 1920s. On top of that is an engraved image from a book published in the 1890s about Queen Victoria. The orange flower fragment comes from a book endpaper (I did scan it in so that I can use it again but this is part of the original). The lady herself is the Holy Roman empress Maria Theresa of Austria and comes from a John Stobbart guide to among others Vienna, again published in the early 1900s. The final touch is a postage stamp as shown.

Collage Basics class lesson 4

The lessons are following each other hard and fast in the Collage Basics class but I'm quite determined to at least try and keep up with them. Lesson 4 was about the Golden Ratio and our teacher, Mary Green, had used a vintage envelope to illustrate her point.

This reminded me of the fact that I bought some vintage envelopes myself way back in the summer when I paid a visit to the (postage) stamp shop in Edinburgh. After some rummaging they turned up and one was put to use in this page. I promptly forgot all about our lesson but challenged myself not to use a human figure in my page. Quite a challenge for me, as I really love my lovely vintage ladies. I did manage it but only if you don't consider sculptures as human!

The background (barely visible) was part of a vintage map of Muenchen (Munich), overlaid by a vintage map of Russia (pre-revolution). The latter came as a free image gift from Mary during a previous class. At the top I added vintage music. The statue (of Prince Eugene, I have to admit complete ignorance of him, I don't even know his nationality!) was added as well as 2 additional postage stamps to compliment the one that was already attached to the envelope. By the time I was finished I had lost sight completely of what the lesson was all about but I enjoyed how all these disparate images have come together.

P.S. I really felt guilty re my ignorance about Prince Eugene so I googled him and I have to beg his pardon, he was in fact a most famous military man in his day and belongs to Savoy. You can read a bit about him here!

Destination Unknown Spread

The 4th Lesson of the Collage Basics class I'm doing with our wonderful teacher Mary Green will be going online today so it was high time I made my samples for lesson 2 and 3, dedicated to colour and pattern respectively. I combined both into one spread made in my sketchbook (to which I'm adding whatever comes to mind at any given moment).

For the background I combined genuine vintage book endpaper, wallpaper and text. I added the copy of the vintage postcard dedicated to French stamps and the vintage images of a car as well as a young lad. Both come from different issues of the Chatterbox magazine, published in the early 1900's. The final touch came from 3 different actual postage stamps and rubberstamping with travel related stamps.

Life's Happiness ATC

You may have noticed the button in the sidebar already and today I made my first ATC for Mary Green's new class Collage Basics. I know that if I don't sign up and pay for a class at the moment I won't let myself do anything else but quilt and really it's so good to take some time out from all that hard work, to play and relax! So I joined Mary's class and had a great hour putting together this ATC for our first class.

It stretched my design muscles (they could do with a bit of exercise!) and it was also fun searching through all my vintage papers. I used a vintage wallpaper with flowers as the background and glued it onto a watercolour ATC blank. I added the lovely lady,also with flowers in her hand and from one of my vintage postcards. The map at the bottom picks up those flower colours. Of course, I could not resist adding words. They are now almost a must on my mixed media work and they are also starting to creep on to my smaller quilts! The final touch was antiqueing the edges of the ATC with a Distress inkpad. The ATC then looked as if needed something more and in the end I punched out a small star shape, from painted paper and glued it in the top right hand corner. That was it, the card was done!

Vintage Fashion ATCs

I'm hosting another swap on the ATCsforAll site and once again I have chosen something vintage as the theme for the swap. Since doing the Vintage Gluebook class I've really developed even more of a taste for vintage and I'm looking forward to starting the Collage Basics course (like the Gluebook one taught by Mary Green). You can do this class too, just click on the relevant button in the right-hand sidebar of this blog.

For my own Vintage Fashion ATCs I started with watercolour ATC blanks to which I glued pages from a variety of vintage books such as dictionairies, encyclopaedia and music. Once dry I overpainted with gesso, shaded pink with acrylic paint and once that had dried I added buttercup yellow spray paint.

I overstamped the card with a large text stamp and then added the fashion plate images, in the shape of clear tape transfers. They too come from vintage books. The next additions were the black rub-ons (clocks, birdcage etc) from 7Gypsies. I found suitable text for all the cards and antiqued the edges with a Distress Inkpad. The final ATC (shown underneath) also needed a gold Dresden corner embellishment.