Flower Collages

Flower collages are really easy to do and you can make them big or small, simple or really complicated!

Materials:

base material like canvas or board, wall putty or gesso, brush, acrylic paint, water, various paper and fabric. Scissors, white glue, crochet thread, needle,

Optional materials:

Stencils, rubber or foam stamps, fabric, felt, leather, decorative scissors, spray bottle, fixative

1. Decide on your substrate or base material- canvas? Cardboard? Just make sure you can put a needle through it. Coat with gesso or wall putty. I prefer the latter as it’s cheaper, it’s not as fine, but I like the texture it makes. Dry the gesso or wall putty well. If you paint on it and it's not that dry, your work will have white streaks on it..

2. Paint the surface a light color (yellow, light blue, pink, etc.) and wait for it to dry. Apply a second coat of paint – use a slightly darker color. You don’t have to paint all areas. After this dries, apply a third coat of darker color (dark blue, orange, brown, etc.). Again, you don’t have to cover all areas. You can use stencil, or stamps to add texture and interest to your background. You can wipe away some parts and you can even use a water spray bottle to add moisture and dab away the moist paint.

3. Prepare your materials for the flowers. You can use printed cardstock but I prefer to make my own painted paper. Look for old books with music sheets, foreign languages and paint them in different colors.Make your own designs using the computer- use interesting calligraphy fonts to encode french poems for instance. You can also use wall putty or gesso on bookpaper and paint it after it dries.

I also like to draw on book pages and copy it. Paint with acrylic or watercolor. Make different patterns and designs.

4. I also use fabric glued on paper. Use 50/50 water and white glue to attach the fabric to the paper.Sometimes I can find leather or felt scraps and this can make a nice addition to the collage.

5. Cut out different shaped flowers and petals from the paper and fabric. Sometimes I use decorative scissors for the paper and pinking shears for the fabric. I tried tearing flowers and I liked how that turned out too.Cut out leaves and stems and grass too.

6. This is the part I like. Try out different combinations of the cut out flowers and see which ones you like. Place them on the canvas or cardboard to see the placement of the flowers. Stems can be straight, wavy or crooked depending on your preference.

7. Glue on the stems, and the leaves and use olive green crochet thread to make some stitches. You can use whatever kind of stitches you like. I usually do the back stitchhttp://www.embroiderersguild.com/stitch/stitches/back.html but couchinghttp://www.embroiderersguild.com/stitch/stitches/couching.html , and stem stitches will do as well.http://www.embroiderersguild.com/stitch/stitches/stem.html

8. Glue on the flowers, making sure you have a balance of small and big ones. In my first canvases, I didn’t glue on the flowers and they were 3d, with the petals standing up.However, I started gluing on my flowers because I thought the 3d ones wouldn’t stand the test of time. Either way you want to do it, you will now choose a button to put in the middle of your flowers. Sew this on.