When we decided to move the baby's room to a larger space, that meant we could get artwork for the walls! (Our first child's room was tiny and had pitched ceilings - nowhere to hang anything on the walls.) In looking for inspiration online, i found some really cute bird collage-looking prints. Guess how much they were? Over $100 apiece. The little voice inside my head piped in: "i can make that!!!"
So I did. It took a couple prototypes and alot of cursing, but I'm really happy with the finished products.
Stuff You'll Need:
-mod podge.
-a spongey brush.
-a wide color variety of scrapbooking paper. (look for pieces with small patterns/textures)
-canvas or something similar to glue your collage onto. (I've also seen them done on plywood and styrofoam - you could also just put them on paper and frame them)
-scissors.
-patience.
-a glue stick or two.
Here's how I did it. I printed out the pictures I saw online for inspiration. Initially I was going to copy them completely but ended up only minorly copying them.) Then i started cutting. This is the thing with collages. You cut. Alot. I used regular scissors but i guess you could use tiny scissors too, that might help when you need to cut an extra small piece.
Arrange your pieces on whatever you're going to mount (heh) them on. Eyeball them and put them where you want them. HINT: walk away and do something else for a while, then come back and look at them later with a fresh set of eyes. You'll probably see something you'd like to change. Once you're satisfied with their placement, use a glue stick to glue all the pieces down.
Once the pieces are set in place, it's time to get your mod podge on. God, that sounded lame. Take your spongey brush and brush a thinnish layer of mod podge over the entire thing. It will look gray and milky, but don't worry, it will dry clear.
Here's the thing about mod-podge. I makes your stuff bubble up - especially large pieces. Eventually, once it dries, it will almost all flatten out again. I ran into trouble with my first prototype because I mounted (heh) the pieces onto a piece of paper, then attempted to mod podge the whole piece of paper to a 9 x 11 canvas. Didn't work so well. I'm sure if you're some sort of mod podge genius you could make it work but in my case I had to scrap them and start anew. As evidenced here -
Plus, glueing the entire paper to the canvas made for some awkward - looking edges which i just wasn't happy with.
So I decided to start afresh (is that a word?) and just glue the collage pieces directly onto the canvas. Much better. I did paint the canvasses with a cream-colored acrylic paint before I glued the pieces on.
So. Slap a couple of layers of mod podge on your collages. Make sure you wait until one layer is completely dry before you put on your next layer.
Here's more of the finished product. I'm pretty proud of them!
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