Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2008

Mixing digital and physical art

Materials and Tools: Decorative papers Heavy piece of watercolor paper for foundation Exacto knife, straight edge, and cutting board Matte medium Foam brush Waxed paper 1. Create a geometric background by carefully cutting papers and gluing into place on a foundation piece of watercolor paper. 2. Cover the piece with waxed paper and weight it until completely dry. 3. Scan your piece and make multiple copies in Photoshop (or other image editing software). Store them for future use. 4. Open a photograph of an image that you want to use in the digital portion of your collage. Use the selection tools to remove the background completely. 5. Drag and drop your image onto the scanned background you’ve created. Add text digitally, or print out your collage and add the text manually. Copyright 2008 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains inta

How to make a torn paper landscape collage

A super-easy background or perhaps even a finished collage on it’s own! Well, mine isn’t finished, but yours could be if you made it more artfully than I did ;-) I like to scan these and use them for the background of a digital piece. Materials & Tools: Large sheet of heavy watercolor paper Selection of colored and decorative papers, stock paper weight Matte medium Foam brush Waxed paper Exacto knife Clear plastic measure Cutting board 1. Tear stock papers into uneven strips and arrange in an overlapped pattern. 2. When the papers are arranged to your satisfaction, lift them one at a time and adhere them in place with matte medium. Brush a thin coat of matte medium over top of all papers too. 3. Let it dry completely, covered with waxed paper and weighted down. 4. Use your measure to square up the corners, and cut the piece to whatever size you want, evening up the edges if desired. 5. For more options, scan your piece and play with the colors. I adjusted the hue, saturat

How to make leather-look felt

The background fabric for this bead-embroidered piece is actually felt. When you see it close up, it looks for all the world like rough leather (moreso in real life than in my picture!). Although I’m not philosophically opposed to using leather, I know many people are, and it’s nice to have alternatives. It’s also a lot easier to stitch through than leather! You’re not going to believe how easy it is to do this surface treatment. I’ve asked people to try to figure out what the material is without letting them feel the backside of it, and they always guess leather! Materials: Square of white felt Fusible web Extra heavy acrylic gel Regular acrylic gel Acrylic paints - raw sienna , burnt sienna , interference gold Tools: Iron Parchment paper Foam brush Paper towel Heat gun 1. Iron fusible web to the felt. 2. Smear the surface with acrylic gels. Use fingers. Let partly dry. 3. Drip on light paint color using foam brush. Dab lightly with paper towel. 4. Drip