Collage Stamping Tutorial

Collage comes from the French word coller, which means "to stick."

When you think of collage, you might think of those school art projects in which you glued various words and pictures from magazines onto a sheet of construction paper. Yes, that is collage, but collage can take other forms, like fine art, and also can be used in paper crafting.

For this article, I will demonstrate the basics of a technique called collage stamping. Collage stamping can be as easy or as complex as you want to make it, incorporating a single stamp, several stamps, or stamps plus a combination of other materials.

Several rubber stamp companies manufacture ready-to-use collage-style stamps, which are the simplest method for achieving a collage look. Simply stamp the image or use any of your favorite stamping techniques as you normally would.

If you don't have a collage-style stamp, you can achieve a collage feeling by using the stamps that you already have. Choose stamps that share the same theme for a cohesive look. For my example, I used two rubber stamps to create this card front, but you can use as many stamps as you want to create a more interesting composition.

Supplies

• stamps
• two similar-colored inks
• cardstock
• scrap paper
• temporary adhesive

Instructions:

1. Stamp the image that you want to have in the foreground of your collage onto the cardstock using the darker of the two inks.
   
   
   
   
2. Stamp the same image on to a piece of scrap paper (no need to re-ink) and cut around the image leaving a small border.
   
   
3. Using a small piece of temporary adhesive, stick the image you just cut out over the top of the image you stamped on cardstock, aligning the two images as closely as possible.
   
   
   
   
4. Stamp the next stamp in your composition over the masked image using the lighter shade of ink.
   
   
   
   
5. Gently remove the piece of scrap paper to reveal your collage.
   
   

As you can see from this photo, the first image that I stamped now appears to be in the foreground and the second stamp appears to be in the background. By masking the first image, I avoided having the words from the background stamp overlapping the image of the children's legs.

You can use this technique to create as many layers as you like in your collage; just be sure to remember the first image you stamp will be the top image and last stamp you stamp will be your bottom image.

To complete my card, I inked the edges of the cardstock and mounted it on another piece of cardstock.

If I wanted to, I could have added other elements to the collage, such as torn pieces of patterned paper, stamped acetate or 3-D objects like buttons or fibers to add some texture.

There really is no wrong way to do collage, so have fun experimenting until you find a look that you like.

Supplies used:
Inks and cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Stamps - Paper Bag Studios, A Stamp in the Hand Co.