collage notebook – Felting and Fiber Studio

100 Day Collage Challenge

September 13, 2022 ruthlane Comments 26 comments

My local art group doesn’t meet over the summer but we decided to do a collage challenge. The challenge was to create a collage every day using at most 3 pieces of paper and to only take 12 minutes to create the collage. I started the challenge on May 24th and reached my goal of 100 days on September 5th. The hardest issue I had with the challenge was the time restraint. Even with choosing my paper in advance, I had a hard time completing a collage in 12 minutes. So I ignored the time limit but tried to keep it under 30 minutes. No waffling around on how it went together.

Today, I’m showing you some of my favorite collages. There were some that turned out good and others, not so good. But it was a great way to work on color studies, composition and to do something creative to start out my day. If you would like to see all 100 collages, you can check them out on my Instagram account here:

Ruth Lane Instagram

In case you’re wondering, I have a huge plastic tub filled with paper that has been gelli printed, screen printed, hand painted, printed with block prints and whatever other techniques I have done in the past. So I have a wonderful source of papers to use for collage. If you are thinking of trying this challenge, you can use whatever paper sources you have. Many artists use magazine photos, open source online photos, wrapping papers, or whatever they have on hand.

So here are a few of my favorites. You can click on the photos to enlarge if you’d like to see them closer. I had a great time searching through my papers and creating a different collage every day.

Have you tried this type of daily challenge? We’d love to see your results and hear about the challenge. Let me know if you’d like to write a post about a challenge you have participated in.

And speaking of challenges, our third quarter challenge using botanicals as a theme is over at the end of this month. I think a few of my collages meet the guidelines! If you have something botanical to share for the challenge, please submit your photo here.

3rd Quarter Challenge and a Notebook

September 18, 2013 zedster66 Comments 13 comments

I’ve finally made a start on a couple of pieces for Karen’s 3rd Quarter Mixed Media Challenge. I chose two different types of background, the first one is a 7 x 5 inch art board, I think it is meant for watercolour paints. These are boards with a textured paper surface.

I covered this with Weldbond glue then added some cotton scrim, I added some Golden gel medium and added some more scrim, making creases, gathers and folds. Then I covered it in Gesso.

The next background is hardboard, the same kind of thing pegboard for workshops is made out of. I got some 8 x 6 inch pieces cut years ago for making polymer clay mosaics.

I covered this in Weldbond glue, added a layer of scrim, then glued another layer of scrim on top. I covered this in Gesso too. They are both almost dry, waiting for me to forget to finish them 😉

I finished another fabric collage notebook cover last week. This is a small A6 one. This is the front:

And this is the back:

I used some flowery fabric to line the inside, and used the sewing machine to attach the flaps, then hand-stitched blanket stitch around all the edges.

It’s probably not quite as effective as zig-zagging with the machine, but it’s helps stop the fabric fraying.

Fabric Collage Notebook Cover

September 6, 2013 zedster66 Comments 14 comments

I had 3 more pieces to finish before I could put my sewing stuff away. They are all notebook covers made from fabric collage pieces I made a few years ago. I thought it was a waste to have them all rolled up and put on a shelf out of the way. I managed to get the parts that needed to be machine stitched all sewn up, and now I just need to finish off the edges by hand. I did finish one yesterday. It was from a collage of autumnal rusty colours. It’s mostly fabric, but has some art yarns sewn in too. I used some braid and delrin clips to make a closure.

This is the back:

I had a really nice fabric piece that I’d used as part of the collage and used this for lining to hide all the stitches:

I thought I’d have a few pictures of the other part finished pieces, but it’s raining today and really dark, but they were made from multi coloured collages. Hopefully they’ll be finished over the weekend, but here’s a supermacro just because 🙂