Shapes collage

This is a new piece I started last Saturday.  However, I wasn't liking it that much and it didn't feel done to me, so I set it aside for a few days.  Then I came home from work on Wednesday and decided what I needed to do to finish it.  I was happy to be working on art in the evening after work, because I haven't done that in a long, long time.  Most days, when I get home from work, I'm so tired I don't feel like doing much of anything.  Perhaps some of you can relate that?

After I added the shapes to this piece, I found I liked it much better.  This collage was done on an 8x10 piece of chipboard.  Normally I use frozen pizza cardboard for most of my bases, but with this being a larger collage, I wanted a sturdier base that wouldn't warp.  First I punched out various shapes out of junk mail cardboard -- the ads that aren't in envelopes, and glued those down on the base.  (I started out with a different idea of where this piece would go, and soon enough, realized it wasn't looking that way at all.  Does that ever happen to you?)  I was going to cover the shapes with a piece of crumpled tissue paper, but instead used a piece of scorched paper made with copy paper.

I made some pieces of scorched paper a long time ago, and never used them.  So I decided to use one on this piece.  Scorched paper is easy to make.  You just take regular copy paper and scorch it with a vintage iron.  This piece was crumpled and then scorched for more texture, but you can scorch uncrumpled paper also.  I use a vintage iron because it gets much hotter than the irons made today, and it's necessary to use a very hot iron to get the scorching and brown color.  I found my vintage iron at a yard sale for $2.00.  Lucky me!

After I glued down the scorched paper with matte Mod Podge, I then tore up a napkin and glued down parts of that, and also torn music paper.  Then I stamped on the scrolls, birds, and text.  Then I rubbed brown shoe polish (the kind in the round tin) all over the piece.  I wanted even more texture, so I brushed on gel medium thickly in random directions.  After that dried, I rubbed more brown shoe polish over the whole piece.  At that point, I set it aside for a few days.

Then I came back to it and finished it, by adding the shapes, the heart, and the key.  For the shapes I punched them out of paint chips.  The green shapes were distressed by sanding and using an awl and a dress pattern tool, then rubbed with brown shoes polish.  I really like the look distressed paint chips give.  I outlined the shapes with a paint pen and a black Sharpie.

You can't tell in the scan, but with the real piece the outlines of the shapes glued down first, under the paper, show up in a sublte way if the light shines on it right.  Anyway, the steps used in making this piece were simple ones.  I was happy to do stamping on this, because so often, I forget to make use of my stamps.  And I have far too many neat stamps that I have yet to use even once.  Isn't that crazy?  Unfortunately I tend to collect them more than actually use them.

So all in all, I'm happy with how this turned out.  And for the most part, I enjoyed making it and it wasn't a struggle.  I think setting it aside and coming back to it later was helpful and the right thing to do.