ROBIN'S STUDIO

Fun with Collage
If you want to get started with a creative project that doesn’t require a lot of expensive supplies, I highly recommend collage. With a few basic materials and a spare hour or two, you can create lovely images that will give you a lot of satisfaction, and will make nice gifts for your friends and family. Ready-made blank greeting cards by Strathmore provide an ideal size and format for collages. They are made from a high quality acid-free paper and come in packages of ten, twenty or fifty, with matching envelopes.

For adhesives, I use a Uhu glue stick on all papers, and for heavier, 3-dimentional or non-porous items, I like Ultimate Tacky glue by Crafter’s Pick or any of the acrylic gel mediums by Liquitex or Golden. They dry very fast and clear, and are strong as super glue but without the fumes. All these adhesives are acid free. Personally, I don’t worry to much about my collage materials being acid free, but you may feel differently. Many interesting papers are imported from India, Thailand and other places, so it is difficult to know if they are acid free or not. If you are concerned, there is an acid neutralizing spray that you can use on any paper.

This is the system I use to create my cards:

First arrange papers in place on the surface of a blank greeting card, until you are happy with the compositon. Then use that as a prototype, and make an ‘edition’ of two, three or four more cards using the same arrangement. This way you always have the original to look at as an example, without having to take it apart for gluing. When you are done with the copies, glue the original together. When applying glue, take an old magazine, and put your pieces face down on the pages. Turn the pages frequently to avoid getting glue where you don’t want it. It helps to keep a damp rag handy to wipe my fingers on.