Here at Creative World we are so lucky to have amazing guests come share their projects! And today we are joined by Paul Browning.
It was extremely flattering to be asked to contribute something to this website and I’m really pleased to offer up a little project. I have been published in Scrapbook inspirations, Simply stamping magazines, Scrapbooking in a weekend and I teach at Topaz crafts.
Though I dabble in all sorts of papercraft, my passion is in collage and all its many varied forms. Altered art is one of my favourite ways to collage, especially if I can recycle something destined for the bin and transform it into art. Charity shops are like an Aladdin’s cave to me. If you haven’t already, go check out your local ones and discover the many different items waiting to be turned into art.
The altered jigsaw pieces I have recently made are all from a box I bought from a store. It was tatty and the previous owner had scribbled on some of the pieces with crayon. Oh yes, & it was a floor puzzle, so the pieces are a good workable size, roughly the dimensions of an adult hand, just to give you an idea.
To begin, you need to remove the patterned layer. It’s fairly easy to pick away at a corner and find the top layer and gently pull away. If you find it too difficult, as an alternative, you can take some sandpaper and rough up the surface.
You should now be left with a piece which resembles a shaped chipboard blank.
The first thing to do is to decorate the surface. There are plenty of ways to do this and for the sake of this tutorial, we are going to use a piece of patterned paper stock. Using PVA glue or similar, coat the surface of the jigsaw and then lay onto the back of your patterned paper. Flip over, and smooth over (I use a brayer). When dry, take a craft knife and trim away the excess paper. Colour the edges with either an ink pad or acrylic paint.
My style of collage is all about layering. So the next step is to stamp over the patterned paper. In this example, I’ve decided to use embossing powder too and you can choose which suits your piece. There are no rules. Now dig around your embellishments box or stamp designs and find something you want as your focal point. That is, the item you want the eye to be drawn to first when you look at the finished piece. Now lay it onto your piece but DON’T stick it down just yet. In design, there is a rule of thirds. If you visually divide the jigsaw shape into thirds top to bottom and left to right, the trick is to place your focal item one third in from the edge, both horizontally and vertically. Okay, now grab a selection of items you want to use and play with putting them together. Add items and then remove items or place in a different position. Then shut your eyes for three or four seconds then open them and look at your assembled work. Is your eye drawn to your focal image? If not, you need to play around some more. Now the above image looks pretty complete and when I was happy I began to glue everything in place. If you can, one trick is to take a quick photo before you disassemble, in case you forget how you put it together. As it is, I think this looks like a well balanced collaged art piece. However there is just one final step which I think truly transforms it into art. And that is to add some text. The sentence cobbled together here came from “found art”, my favourite kind. I opened up a magazine, in this case, The New Scientist, and tried to find words or sentences which related to the theme of my piece. These lines of text came from a single paragraph but were not in this order originally. I took them and made my own sentence. One which said something to me about friends. I stuck them down and now the piece is ready to adorn my art room wall. Using the same technique as described above, I have made a further three examples to show you just how different each piece can look. I hope you feel inspired to have a go. If you don’t have any jigsaw pieces to hand, don’t let that stop you. Look around and find something else what you can use instead. A chipboard piece, a CD, a plastic bottle. I would love to see what you come up with. Many thanks for your interest. If you’d like to see more of my altered art, why don’t you check out my blog page at www.theartsiders.blogspot.com Paul x It's our birthday tomorrow so make sure you come back for some birthday fun
