Collage exhibition

I recently visited the Cut and Paste exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was an absolutely fascinating exhibition!

I found it interesting the types of things that are regarded as collage that I hadn't thought of before - photomontages, Victorian paper scraps, scrapbooking, beachcombed items, stickers, and the time when I was at school and covered one of my folders with black & white photos of celebrities (there was a folding screen in the exhibition that was the Victorian equivalent of this!). As someone who does quite a bit of collage, I was surprised by how little I knew about the subject!


Some of the things I really liked in the exhibition were things that evoked nostalgia for me - paper scraps, Fuzzy Felt, stickers, neatly arranged objects, sepia photographs, and a toyshop window.

The first things I saw in the exhibition were some flower pictures. At first I though, "Oh, I didn't know pressed flowers were collage!", then I read the captions and realised that only some parts of the images were made from real plants - and it was impossible to see which! Of course, pressed flowers probably do count as collage anyway, but these images combined them with paper in an amazing way.

I liked how some pictures were done with painted paper that was then cut up. It was very difficult to distinguish these from actual paintings. I'd really like to try some of this kind of collage. I really admire an artist I follow online, Clover Robin, who does this sort of work.

I was very excited at the very end of the exhibition to find some Matisse collages, including the one that inspired one the illustrations for my 100 day project!

I came out of the exhibition fired up with inspiration and ready to create! And so I immediately stuck my exhibition sticker onto the sketchbook page I'd been drawing, and when I got home I added some of the scraps that I bought in the gift shop. I love that collage is such a versatile medium and everyone can use it in their own way.

Tudor bus postcard

Here's the last of my postcards for the postcard club. This one was designed for Kristen, who likes buses, tea, haberdashery, the Tudors and turquoise. I made a slightly crazy card with some Tudors travelling on a bus which is advertising Kristen's Tea and Haberdashery Shoppe!

I hope you've enjoyed seeing all the postcards, and now you can finally see them all together:

Alpaca love postcard

Here's another postcard for summer postcard club. This was for Helen, who loves cats, alpacas, rainbows, cherries and wildflowers. I used a photo I took in Peru of an alpaca munching on some greens, and replaced those with cherries! Behind this I placed a large rainbow, and then, just because it seemed to need it, some stars and hearts.

Parisian cat postcard

Here's another of my postcards for Marceline's postcard club. Alison's interests are CATS! And birds, books, flowers, scenes from Paris or London or Tokyo or India, and her favourite colours are purple, red and black. I designed her postcard with a very romantic cat, holding a flower in front of the Eiffel Tower, on which a bird is perching, and I used Alison's favourite colours of purple, red and black.

Space beach bunny postcard

Here's the next of the postcards I sent for the postcard club, which was to Marceline who organised the club. Marceline's interests are bunnies, space, Japan, yellow and the seaside, so the postcard I designed for her is of a bunny on a yellow beachy planet, with a background of my favourite planet Jupiter!

 

Groovy cat postcard

The first person on my list for Marceline's Summer Postcard Club was Storm, whose interests include rock music, cats, Finland, cats, purple and British Racing Green, cars, fountain pens and calligraphy. Here's the postcard I designed for her, with a cat listening to music, purple and green, and some hand-cut lettering.

Notan design

I first came across Notan designs at the school I work in. Some of the art classes had been creating them as Christmas card designs, and there was a large display of them on the wall.

I hadn't ever heard of Notan designs before, so I had a look on Google and I found some amazing examples! I then started to think of my own ideas.

Notan fits in well with my love of Japanese design - it is a Japanese concept involving the placement of light and dark together in imagery. I'm surprised I haven't come across it before! It makes use of positive and negative space, something I'm really interested in at the moment.

I don't know if this particular form of Notan design, using a rectangle of black or white card on a contrasting background, comes from Japan or not - I couldn't find anything about its origins.

1. I cut a piece of paper about 1/8 of the size of my background paper, and used this to draw my design idea on. I sketched a Japanese inspired pond with a crane, bullrushes, a cloud, and a mountain. I was going to have a cherry blossom lying on the ground, but I decided to leave it out to simplify the design.

2. I taped the design to dark blue card, then cut out the design using a craft knife and small scissors.

3. I modified some areas, such as the snow at the top of the mountain (cutting a small outline to distinguish it from the background), and the bird (cutting the feet and head where they crossed the edge of the pond).

4. I cheated by adding the crane's eyes with white and navy pen! It would have been way too fiddly to cut a circle that small!

This was a really fun project that created a bold design! It was a challenge to work out the different areas, and what colour they should be. I'm sure this is something I will be trying more of!

Kodomo no Hi: Collage

Another item to celebrate the Japanese festival of Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day). This one is a simple stylized collage using various origami papers, and it was really easy to make using rectangles of different sizes for the fish, cutting out notches for the tails, and adding circles for the eyes.

Blog redesign

I'm really excited to reveal the new look of my blog! Some of you might have seen it evolving over the past week, but now that the header is finished, the blog is finally ready.

I've been redecorating my craft room in more neutral tones, and I decided to do the same with the blog. I've added buttons to the sidebar to make it easier to find the types of posts you are most interested in, and a "Related posts" section to the bottom of each post.

There will be bigger, brighter photos, and, I hope, more frequent, varied content, including lots of fun craft projects. So stay tuned!

Imagination, Time and Money

I've been asked to speak to a class about card making. These are some illustrations for my presentation.

Sleigh scene Christmas cards

This year's Christmas cards for my family are based on one of our family traditions - the sleigh scene.

The Santa and reindeer are ornaments that my parents probably bought in the 1970s, and look like they are of Chinese or Japanese origin. The robins joined the scene when my mum made them in the early 1980s, and they sit in a sleigh made from a basket. Each pom-pom robin has its own cheeky personality. My mum used to fill the sleigh with sweets (often from the (now much missed) pic-n-mix at Woolworths). Each sweet would be wrapped up and have a ribbon attached to it, and we would have to grab a ribbon to choose our sweet. Finally, Mum made the snowman to join the gang a few years ago.

When I left home, I had to start my own collection of ornaments for my own sleigh scene. I have a ceramic Santa and penguin, a cuddly reindeer given to me by my friend Katrina, some robins (made by Mum of course) sitting on little wooden sledges, a little wooden Christmas tree, two snowmen (also made by Mum). This year I also added a toy soldier and Finnish doll which I had found in charity shops.

In order to make the cards, I needed to get some photos of the sleigh scene as I didn't have any good enough photos to work from. Luckily I was able to surreptitiously take some photos a few weeks ago, but that didn't leave me much time to make the cards. I usually start them in October!

I made the cards so that they could be displayed together as a continuous scene. Before I assembled the cards I scanned the various elements arranged against a sheet of paper - I may use this design for some of next year's printed cards (yes, I'm thinking that far ahead!).