Inspiration for Collage Papers

When things seem to get a little stagnant, I like to thumb through my favorite art books or browse online videos for inspiration. When I find links that inspire me, I like to share them. I was excited to find this one by Claudine Hellmuth demonstrating the use of metal polish and magazine pages to create your own collage papers. I love this. I knew about this technique, but had never tried it nor seen it demonstrated. Sometimes I have too be shown.

The following video deals with fabric design and starts in the middle of the demonstration, so the information isn’t complete. You can probably fill in the blanks. But nevertheless I like what’s happening to this piece of cloth:

Here Anne Bagby demonstrates how she uses cut paper stripes from hand painted and printed paper in her collage designs:

And finally, I love the following video by Linda Germain, which shows just how simple and Zen-like the gelatin print process can be. Notice that she uses the exact same collection of homemade materials over and over, with a different result every time. Each application of paint and placement of the masking materials, or stencils, gives you two prints — a positive and a negative. This is my go-to process for making collage papers. I use a gelli plate rather than the traditional gelatin plate.

I hope you’re inspired too.