Screen Sirens Collage & Paint

Collage seems to be one of my favourite mediums. These are the ingredients I used pictured below

1    The base is cheap watercolour paper. Which you wet and lay on torn pieces of the tissue paper. You can wet another piece of the water colour paper and lay this on top. Press them together to transfer the colour from the tissue paper. Be sure to buy tissue paper that bleeds and is not COLOUR FAST. Put aside to dry - remember to remove the coloured tissue paper. Set this aside for use again. 

2   Tear up the tissue paper from the pattern and scrunch it up so it has lots of creases in it. Use the Gloss Medium to stick this over the dried watercolour paper. Make sure you get lots of lines, arrows and words in the main part of your design. You can also use the instruction pages as well, some graph or squared paper also goes well. You can do several layers to build up texture. Set aside to dry.

3   Now onto glazing the paper with the paint. Squeeze out a blob of red and pour a generous amount of Glazing Medium onto the blob of paint. Do Not Mix - just dab you brush into the paint picking up some medium as well. The idea is to get thick & thin areas of colour, with stripes and blobs of paint. Set aside to dry and repeat with the blue. Slap it on and have fun with this bit - no fussing allowed. Set aside to dry again.

4  The pictures of the Screen Sirens are from an old  -1940's movie picture book. I have used the originals on these, but scanned the images to use again. Cut out the picture you want to use. Again use the Gloss Medium, paint the medium over the picture and on the place on the paper where you want it to go. Lay the picture wet side down and smooth over it to get it to lay flat. You can use a brayer, soft one or I use a baby wipe as you can mop up the excess medium that squidges out the sides. Rub over the picture until you are sure its all stuck. Again put aside to dry. 

5  You need to leave 24 hours to let the medium dry properly.

6 And now the messy bit. Dampen the back of the picture and rub, with fingers, abrasive washing sponge or baby wipe. Keep dampening the paper until all the backing paper has gone and you are left with the original image. I find that I start with the abrasive sponge to get the worst off and then go onto fingers and finally the baby wipe. The baby wipe gets every bit of paper off for me. I buy the better quality baby wipes that are made of thicker fabric (UK Brand Tesco's own)

7  When dry I varnish with Matt Varnish as this just knocks the gloss back to a better level.

Bright as a Button

My Guardian Angel

Head Over Heels in Love

Me and my Shadow

No Man is an Island

Puppet on a String

All 8x10 and mounted to fit 12x10 frames.

This is the tissue paper that was used. It has been stuck onto some of the pattern tissue and can then be used in another project. I did make ten samples two failed at the image transfer stage. There's a lot of drying time on this project, so do what I do and have several projects on the go at once - or you could do some housework :-D

The little music folk were part of a display to celebrate the Olympics. They will probably creep into some more of my art.

Have fun.

The Aunts and Cousins

Yay back on line!!!! Lot of catching up to do so I'm starting with an update on recent work.

I've based these on pictures of people in a 1937 magazines, from photographs, adverts or fashion pictures. They were first drawn onto calico. Under the calico are the designer satin labels that I used when I had my Knitwear Business. These had Joan Rowland or Coggeshall Knitwear on them and were beige/brown or white /blue. Under these two layers is a curtain fabric, rather heavy one for stability, you can't see this fabric.

I have then used the sewing machine to stitch and embellish, with some lace used for hair, collars, hat and cuffs. They were then mounted on modern papers from a Laura Ashley set. When I framed them I put lace at the base and another strip of paper. It looks like they are looking out of a window with a cafe curtain. They are about 8 x 12, have a double mount of white/black and are in modern black frames.

I've sold two of these at the Popup Shop in Chelmsford.

Missed blogging and I'm really looking forward to all your comments.