REVEALED: Secrets of Building a Rubber-Stamped Collage

Hello stamplings! Today I have a tutorial for you on how I made this zany collaged doll for the Black & White challenge over at the Lost Coast Portal to Creativity. You can use these same principles to help you plan and execute any sort of rubber-stamped collage.

1. Plan out the composition. 

(As this piece was always intended to be in black & white only--no color--I chose images in various degrees of texture and blackness, striving for a variety of line and pattern.) 

Gather the stamp images you'd like to use and start playing with them. You can stamp them and roughly cut them out to position them relative to each other...or sketch them on a piece of paper to approximate size...or use software such as Photoshop or InDesign to make a sketch. 

I used InDesign, layering the images on top of each other very coarsely (not removing the opaque white backgrounds from each image) just to get an idea of what I wanted to do. My sketch looked like this:

Crude, right? But that's all you need to get the job done in the planning stages.

2) Decide on your focal point. 

In all likelihood, this will be the image you stamp first--the one that appears on top of all the other layers in the collage, in the foreground. In my composition, it was the eyeglasses image.

3) Determine the order of operations.

If you have a fairly complex collage to build like this one (using more than say, three stamps), now you have to figure out the order in which you are going to stamp. The things that go behind, in the background, get stamped last. Determine what is "foreground" and what is "background," and proceed in a logical order. 

4) Using your sketch as a blueprint...start stamping! 

I recommend the use of a stamp positioner or stamp press tool such as the MISTI or the We R Memory Keepers press (which is what I used). This allows you to re-ink the stamp and get perfect coverage with subsequent impressions in case an image prints a little unevenly the first time. (When you are working on building a multi-step collage like this one, you don't want to wreck it with a faded-looking or partial print of one of the images!) These tools also allow you to place each stamp exactly where you want it to print--handy! You'll see what I mean below.

5) Cut a mask for each image as you work. 

After you stamp each image on the "real" paper, stamp off onto some scrap paper, and cut that print out to use as a mask. I used repositionable adhesive to stick down my masks precisely over each image before stamping the next layer atop it. 

TIP: Cut the masks juuuuust inside the image's outline--this avoids leaving a dreaded white halo around the masked image as you stamp over it, allowing you to get right up nice and close to abut the masked image with the image you are layering over (which will actually appear "under") it.

So! In the photo below, you can see that I stamped the eyeglasses first, then masked them off...followed by the face with hat, whose mask I placed over both the eyeglasses mask and the stamped image of the face/hat...then the viney flourish (which didn't get masked, because nothing appears behind it). Here's how the collage looked at this stage:

Leave all the masks in place as you work. It will help keep everything nice and clean in the event of a dropped ink pad or inky finger smudges. Don't ask me how I know this.

In the next pic, you can see how I placed the (uninked) body stamp right on the paper where I wanted it to print. (When you close the lid on the stamp press, the stamp clings to the lid...you ink the stamp up, the close the lid again, allowing you a precision print of your image. See the second pic below.)

I printed the doll's body (not inking the legs all the way down, since I knew I was gonna add cool stripey socks)...stamped, cut, and adhered a body mask...and continued to build the collage.

Next came the wings...here you can see them in position with the lid of the press closed, ready to make a perfect impression. (SO MY STAMP PRESS IS DIRTY DON'T JUDGE)

After this came the socks (and sock masks), then two fun borders for the doll to stand on--all of which in turn was masked off by a couple of Post-It notes, because they were easier and quicker than cutting and adhering precise custom masks (see pic below).

After the feet and borders were masked off, the area between them and the masked wings was stamped with the final background layer of loopy script.

6) Remove the masks; oooh and aaaah.

MASK REMOVAL TIME...yeah baby! The fun begins! I called my trusty 12-year-old son to help film The Big Reveal and to peel away a few masks with me. This was rather fun, seeing the composition slowly unveiled. 

Click the video here to see the final stamp collage REVEALED!

And that's it!

This technique would work great for limited edition pieces or cards...I mean, if you're going to go to all the trouble of planning an elaborate collage and cutting out a crap-ton of masks, you might as well have several "prints" to show for it...amirite?

If you have any questions whatsoever about this process, please ask me in the comments below. I will either answer there or revise this blog post if it turns out I missed some major point that you guys want to know.

Thanks as always for visiting!  💗

Step-By-Step: Vintage Mixed-Media Tag ("Sweet Mabel")

Hi guys! Today I have a step-by-step breakdown of how I made this vintage mixed-media tag.

I call it "Sweet Mabel." Mabel was the name of the mother of my childhood friend Maryellen, and it struck me as an old-fashioned name even back then. The Mabel I knew was pretty nice, although she looks nothing like the "Mabel" on this tag.  :)

I started with a journaling card that looked like this:

The text on the card didn't really bother me, as I knew I'd be covering most of it up during the making of the tag anyway. So I trimmed the card to tag size and shape and got to work...

I took out a mini ink tool and a couple of colors of Distress ink and went over the lettering to reduce the difference in value between it and the background:

Next, I chose some vintage sheet music and a page from a midcentury book and tore them up, then added a piece of scrapbook paper, and collaged it all down with Mod Podge. At this stage, things looked like this:

This was a good start, but the tag needed some texture and dimension. So I got out my trusty texture paste and a favorite stencil, and quickly slapped some scrolly leaves onto a few spots on the tag.

After letting the paste dry for a couple of minutes, I wanted to blend and distress the whole shebang so it would start to merge into a unified background. I got out some spray stains in Tea Dye and Antique Linen and spritzed a bit...

But the tag still needed MOAR. I dabbed some Distress Stain in Crushed Olive (one of the most awesome colors ever to exist, by the way; you can thank me later) and let the tag start to marinate in all the vintage-colored juices I was bathing it in.

And yet even the divine Crushed Olive was not really doing enough. I wanted the scrolly leaves and vines to stand out a bit more, and I also wished I hadn't slapped the texture paste on so roughly; I wanted it a little smoother. So I decided to blend a custom glaze of Mod Podge (you could use any gel medium) and Distress Stain. I mixed a little Vintage Photo into my medium and painted over the vines.

The glaze pooled a little bit around the texture paste and smoothed everything out a little, helping the vines pop just enough.

Now it was time to put the focal point together. I had a vintage photo of "Mabel" all ready to go; it didn't need anything done to it. But it needed a frame to set her off. I chose a die-cut frame made of scrapbook paper rather than an actual metal frame. But it needed more dimension...so I coated it with clear embossing powder dusted with Perfect Pearls in Heirloom Gold to add just a hint of aged patina, then melted the mixture to the frame.

I glued Mabel behind the frame and fastened it down with some brads, adding a special rhinestone brad at the top of the frame.

The frame was decorated with some peach-pink roses that I fussy-cut from a few odd pieces of paper I had lying around.

And suddenly, all that was left to finish the tag was to punch a hole at the top...edge the tag in copper metallic and brown chalk ink...add a piece of distressed trim to the bottom edge...and tie it with a ribbon.

Et voila! Sweet Mabel lives on in her own tag. As always, I welcome your comments and thoughts below, and am happy to answer any questions if I skipped over something you might have wanted to know more about.  :)

Happy art-making!

Words and Music: Deciding How to Work with Someone Else's Captions

One of my favorite kinds of projects to do are collaborative artist trading cards--or ATC jams (where typically one person makes a background, sends it on to a second person who adds a focal point, who in turn sends the card on to a third person for final touches). These collaborations can move to some really unexpected (and quite wonderful) places as each artist brings her own individuality and eye to bear on the composition.

One of the challenges that I particularly enjoy is how to work WITH the elements left for me by the artists who have gone before me in the piece. For me, a successful collaboration means honoring what the other artists have done by attempting to preserve its integrity while adding to the whole with my own vision. I don't consider it a success when one artist negates what another has done by, for example, covering up previous contributions ("covering up" in the sense of obliterating or rendering invisible, not layering upon). How to both show and build upon what the others have already contributed? This is the challenge, and for me, the delight: art as a puzzle to solve.

"a successful collaboration
means honoring
 what the other artists have done"

A recent ATC jam that I worked on presented a fun challenge: it came to me already captioned with not only words but bits of sheet music. (Some of you may know that I am a musician as well as a visual artist. Fragments of music as used in collage thus always carry an extra layer of meaning for me, as I can hear in my head the tune that is shown as well as usually discern the type of music it is and the time period it comes from--such as a Romantic-era piano piece, or a fragment from a church hymnal, or a bit of a jazz lead sheet. Consciously or unconsciously, these musical bits color my perceptions of the rest of the piece. Ideally, they harmonize! LOL)

But back to the jam at hand. The first layer as created by Marie was a richly colored gel print in a geometric honeycomb pattern overlaid with deep amber swirls:

It had nice texture and depth to work with--two qualities that always make the finished product more interesting!

Layer Two was added by Charlotte. She distressed some sheet music fragments and added some little raised tiles with text on them, both of which introduced the color black into the palette. She left plenty of room for the third artist--me--to interpret her and Marie's contributions and finish the set of cards.

What was interesting to me about what Charlotte did was that all three of her sheet music fragments and all three of her captions were different from card to card. 

On the first card, she specifically seemed to link the music and the text, with the words "Life is" from the first and "independence" to the latter. This strengthened my natural inclination to "hear" the music fragment as melody to the accompanying texts. (Since the key signature is visible, I felt pretty sure the next note would have been an F# for the syllable "in-"...and wondered how the rest of the word "independence" might be set to the music!) With D major being a pretty upbeat, happy, and even brash key, and with Marie's color scheme suggesting Independence Day, I started to think along patriotic lines in contemplating what I might add.

But did I want to pursue the line of combining music plus text? When I looked at the other two cards, I tried to think of a contribution from me that would be fairly unified across the set and that would also honor the work of Charlotte and Marie.

"This is the challenge, 

and for me, the delight: 

art as a puzzle to solve."

The card reading "explore, dream, discover" to me seemed to have a softer sentiment than the other two cards, owing to the word "dream" (thus making me think that perhaps the music fragment from the last card, in A-flat and with its rhythmic swaying between two notes, might have gone better with this particular text...and that the 4/4 G-major frag, which could conceivably be a march, might have gone better with "so the adventure begins"...). But if I disregarded the word "dream," the sentiments of "explore" and "discover" were still pretty bold... How did these words fit with the patriotic feel I was getting from the first card? And what could I do? Maybe find vintage illustrations, perhaps from the Colonial period, that might reflect these ideas?

I rather quickly discarded that idea as being too literal. Furthermore, I felt that Charlotte's contribution, differing as it did from card to card, introduced enough variation to the set; I started to think that I wanted my contribution to be approximately the same across the three cards, and to let the variety in Charlotte's words set the frame of how the viewer would see my contribution, with Marie's background playing the foundational role.

I also realized about this time that the great majority of viewers of these cards might not read music at all, or if they did, might not think to try to link what the music was actually saying to what the texts also said. So I decided to treat the music as largely a merely visually decorative element at this point as I further pondered my contribution.

I did like the vintage illustration idea, but I decided I wanted something quirky and perhaps downright odd. I struck upon this illustration of a maiden leading a moose by a ring through its nose as being wonderfully weird:

AND...when I tried this picture on with each of Charlotte's captions, some new meanings seemed to emerge in regards to what the illustration now seemed to say under each of the sentiments. "Independence" now seemed ironic, since the creature was literally being led by the nose by the maiden. "Explore, dream, discover"--perhaps the maiden was about to be in for the exploration and discovery of her life! (Just how genteel could this besuited moose really be?) "And so the adventure begins" also seemed ironic and perhaps dire; was this to be an adventure for the moose, or for the maiden? Where is she leading him? To the slaughter?

"These slightly uncomfortable
and ambiguous juxtapositions
pleased me greatly." 

YES. These slightly uncomfortable and ambiguous juxtapositions pleased me greatly. I found them thought-provoking and darkly humorous and a little bit weird, which are pretty much my three favorite qualities in a piece of art. I knew in a flash that I had found my contribution. Now to finish the cards!

I manipulated the original illustration in Photoshop to adjust the color cast so that it would be more harmonious with Marie's color scheme. Once it was affixed to each card, I made the colors even more brilliant by adding some creamy colored pencil to embolden the figures and keep them from being dominated by the rich and busy background.

My figures needed a bit of a ground to appear against, which would also help reduce the impact of the background, so I chose some translucent washi tape in a vintage music print that would echo Charlotte's music fragments. (All this music seemed to lend a fairy-tale or pastoral quality to the whole as well, like some sort of Sondheim-esque "Hello Little Girl" vignette.) This washi also repeated the black that she had introduced to the palette; to play up the black and frame the composition, I edged the cards in soft chalk ink, then added an enamel-like border of melted embossing powder.

And voila! My work here was done.

Quick & Simple ATC: Distressed Background Technique

Fun with ATC Jams

What's an ATC ("Artist Trading Card") jam?

Well, first, what's an Artist Trading Card? An ATC is a baseball-card-sized piece of art meant to be shared or traded with other artists (never sold). It must conform to the standard 2.5" x 3.5" format, but otherwise can be any media and any theme.

So! An ATC jam is a collaborative effort between (usually) three artists. The first artist makes a background layer on each of three cards, then sends the cards to the second artist, who adds a focal point to each card and in turn sends the cards to the last artist, who finishes them up and returns one card to each of the first two artists.

Recently I participated in a really fun jam with Gillman and Bohochick on Swap-bot. I thought I'd share a bit with you about how I approached my role in the collaboration to give you a bit of insight into my creative process. I love that I'm working within the constraints "imposed" by the artists whose work came before mine while trying to honor and build upon their contributions to the finished product. It's a fascinating and satisfying thing to do.  :)

Gillman started the backgrounds, putting layers of paint over collaged paper, some of which had text printed on it. (I wish I had photos of how the cards appeared at this stage, but alas.)

Bohochick added some dimensional drizzles and splatters of thick acrylic paint that gave the card more personality, yet left it without a focal point...leaving ME with all the power! Mwah ha ha...

What would I do with these (hardly) blank canvases, with not much direction indicated? Hmmm...

When I got the cards from Bohochick, they were very free-form, and looked like this:

With so much color already on the cards, I tried to think of an interesting focal point for each that would harmonize with the background while still being strong enough to stand up to all that was already going on there.

I settled on three bizarre stamp images from Lost Coast Designs that I absolutely love. (Are they adorable? Creepy? Pathetic? Hilarious? I wish I knew more about them--the time period and the illustrator. One of the guys looks like a monk to me. But back to the story...)

I decided to ink the images in two colors on glossy photo paper (inspired by the gloss of Bohochick's bold white blops of paint). I felt black ink alone would be too stark and not tie in enough with the colors on the cards, so I chose a deep plum already found on the cards to combine with the black, and blended the inks right on the stamps. I love the richness and quality of color of these StazOn solvent inks.

My figures needed a bit of ground to appear against to give the composition interest and depth. So I inked up a clear acrylic checkerboard stamp and rolled it a little haphazardly on part of the cards.

I then fussy-cut out the bizarre little guys and decoupaged them to the cards with glossy Mod Podge (I was definitely into the gloss thing courtesy of Bohochick and that thick white paint!)

It struck me that the cards now looked, thanks to my bizarre figures, as though they might have come out of a very odd tarot deck, so I decided to assign them numbers. I have an ancient (I mean ANCIENT--like 25 years old!) set of stamps in the "Africa" typeface, which worked well here because the characters have a thin line of white inside the chunky number- and letterforms. Since I was leaving my figures white (plus the blended stamp colors), I liked how this white/color duality linked the numbers to the figures.

To finish the cards, I sealed them with more glossy Mod Podge and put a border of dimensional (and GLOSSY!--are you sensing a theme?) black and white enamel paint along the edges. The border started out as alternating dots of color, but the paint wasn't entirely dry when I put the cards in the scanner to take these pictures, so the dots flattened out.  :(  I decided this was serendipitous, since it sort of added to the checkerboard theme going on.

Here's how the finished cards turned out:

It struck me that only the card numbered 7 was really obviously right side up--the other two could be turned upside down and still make sense visually, with the 6 becoming a 9 (and the monk-lizard looking like he was standing on his head, while the bird-bug might have been like some weird bat hanging upside down, with the 8 still reading as an 8).

I decided to keep the 7 for myself and send the 8 and the 6/9 back to Gillman and Bohochick in case they liked the upside-down duality aspect of the cards.

Here's a closeup of my (glossy!) no. 7:

I leave you with a comparison photo of how the cards looked after Phase II (top row) and after they were finished (bottom). Any questions? Or comments? I'd love to hear what you think of this ATC jam. Have you ever done one? Would you like to?

Post a comment!