Crafty Saturdays

Collaging is probably my favorite way to relax creatively. For one, its super easy and therefore very "low risk, high reward," unlike drawing and painting which can be frustrating if you don't get it right. Collaging is also really useful for posters, wall art, birthday cards and basically anything else graphic and fun. It can be really cute and lowkey (for example, the collages I used to make of old seventeens showing the different make-up items I wanted) or intricate and artsy (more like the collages I made today).

Anyway, collaging is a great way to spend a low-key Saturday. Below are the steps I took to make one of the collages I created today.




1. Gather your materials

Obviously, you need images to put a collage together, so I gathered a few magazines (Teen Vogue and New York Times Magazine) that had a lot of great content. I really love collaging with New Tork Times Magazine images because they're so gorgeous alone and paired with other pictures. In addition to the magazines I just used some big and little scissors for cutting out general and detailed stuff, Elmers glue and an Elmer's glue stick and a paintbrush for the Elmer's glue. The paper I used is just newsprint sketch paper, but honestly printer paper works just as well.


2. Cut out literally everything

My suggestion for collaging is to cut out anything that you find remotely interesting and edit your selections later. This way you don't have to go back into your magazines to find images later when you're putting everything together.


3. Trim Your Images

The more exact you are with your trimming, the better your collage will look! Using smaller scissors for little details like leaves or fingers works much better than the large scissors pictured here.

4. Lay out your cut-outs on the page BEFORE gluing

This is the longest part of my collaging process. I;ve spent fifteen minutes moving one little picture of a disco ball around the page, only to glue it in the first place I put it. I find its easier to work with a theme or from one image that really speaks to you, but honestly just gluing down everything randomly looks just as good. Another way to elevate your collaging is to make use of negative space and complementary image border shapes. For this collage I really loved the shape of the hanging girls cut-out, so I worked from that.

5. Glue it all down

I personally love using Elmer's glue as opposed to gluesticks for collaging as it last longer and is more potnet. In order to spread it evenly I use an old paintbrush to apply the glue either on the image itself or all over the paper.

6.  Extras

My collage was looking a little simple, so I added some writing with these cool metallic letter stickers that I got from the copy store in my neighborhood. These are great for anything from labeling notebooks to collaging and they stick to everything.

7. Be proud of your creative soul

Hey look, you made a collage! Here are a few other collages I made today...

∆ Z