Strawberry and Lemonade layered collage

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. Well, it hasn't been waaay long, but longer than I intended. I started out so well, for the first several months after I started my blog, by consistently posting twice a week. Then it kind of got away from me. Well, my work schedule has also changed several times, which has had an effect on my free time and time to do art, so that's been a factor. At any rate, I got some new art done yesterday and today, so I have something new to post. Yippee! It always makes me happy to get new art done, and to post it on my blog.

On my last post, I posted a layered collage, and confessed I didn't intend for it to be a layered collage when I started out. However with this piece, I did intend for it to be a layered collage. Which hopefully means that I'm gaining more confidence in doing this kind of work, and overcoming my fears, or at least some of them, related to layered collage. Although you can't tell from the photo, this piece is smaller than the last one, and is a 5x5 art squared piece.

I glued the background, a page from a wallpaper sample book, onto my old standby, frozen pizza cardboard. This sample is fabric wallpaper. Cool, huh? That gives it a lot of texture, right off the bat. Then I glued down some hand written text, some music paper, and some dress pattern tissue paper. Also some torn strips of gold wrapping paper. At the bottom right, I cut out the image from the envelope of a dress pattern, and glued that down. I also used some netted fabric, fiber paper, screening, and obviously the small key.

Once again, as I did on my last collage, I rubbed brown shoe polish over the whole piece. Then I sprayed with Memory Mists in Mango Lemonade and Strawberry Daiquiri. I LOVE those two colors together. I finished it off by sealing with Acrylic Floor Finish, the Family Dollar brand. One last thing. The key and the screening look silver-ish in the photo, but they are more of a bronze color on the actual piece, and look a lot better than in the photo. It bugs me that they look that way in the photo, but I don't know how to fix that.

Regarding the key, I won two auctions on ebay for a number of old keys. For skeleton keys, and other interesting keys. I lost several auctions before I finally scored. And was amazed at what most old key lots are selling for on ebay. Considering that, I did pretty well on my two auctions, bidding at the last second. Now, I'm the proud owner of 17 very cool old/antique skeleton keys of different sizes. I hope to use some of them on assemblages, if I ever get around to making an assemblage. I was excited to use this tiny key on this piece. I think maybe it's a jewelry box key.

So that's how this piece came together, and I'm feeling better about attempting layered collages. Thanks so much for your encouragement in comments on my last layered collage, it encouraged me, motivated me, and inspired me to make this one. I'm trying to face my fears and overcome them.