Great Ideas For Making Collages

You can have fun expressing yourself, by making your own collage. As you can use what you like to create this, the freedom with this kind of art is endless.

Collages can consist of many different types of textures. Some people cut pieces out of magazines, you can use fabric scraps, cardboard, string, wood jewels, silver paper, there are no bounds.

It may be now, that you have to paint your background card, or whatever you may be using. Once it is dry, you can then sketch out your subject, then try different pieces out and find places to position them on your sketch, or backdrop.

Lets face it, you are not likely to use them all! Crepe paper is often used for collages because of its strength. However, any paper you use will need to be sorted into different colours and be cut or torn to get assorted shapes and sizes.

You want your pieces to stay affixed, so one of the important issues here is, that you need the correct glues for the materials you are using. For example, for fabrics, you need a glue to handle this. If in doubt, read my article on adhesives which can be found at my website.

The collage I have described here is a pretty basic one, but really, if you want to take this a step further, you can use pastels, leather, metal, gravel, buttons etc. Most things can actually be affixed to a flat surface. The rule is really that you can use any items to support what you have in your mind visually.

Why not try doing a collage with plain old black and white newspaper? If you think this out well, you can achieve some quite startling results. If you think what is done by children in schools, they are quite inventive, using everything from bottle tops to silver paper for their projects.

Recent trends seem to lean towards collages made up from assorted photographs. Students and children like doing these to include their friends, family members or family pets.

First of all, you need a base of one kind or another, for mounting all your treasures. You may have to apply paint and let it dry on this first. It may be you are using fabric or paper that does not need this. Next step is to sketch it all out.

Now make your choices from your bits and pieces and remove all the unwanted pieces. The ones you are left with can sometimes appear to be a trifle odd ,but don't let this phase you. They do not all have to be so that you have an even, level, surface.

Move them around your collage, placing them until you are satisfied with what you have. Then glue each piece very carefully and wait for it to dry. Once it has dried, you could put a coating of a sealant on it, just for protection purposes.

The end result is down to you and how you see fit to use it, whether it is mounted on the wall or a shelf as a picture. Make your choice!