Journal Embellishments: Autumn Collage Elements

1. Class Intro: Hello there. I'm Daniella Melon, an author and artist here on skill share. In today's class journal Embellishments Autumn Collage Elements will create four journal projects using collaged images and paper supplies. Then we'll create a collage page, a journal tab, a page edge and a tuck spot to enhance your journal pages and mixed media work. We'll start by downloading and printing the autumn collage element sheets that are full of fall inspired images like brilliant leads, birds and botanicals. All images are from the public domain, so their copyright free. After printing the images on your choice of paper or card stock, cut them out and select the images that you were drawn to. All pages can be found in the project section and downloaded and saved your computer. Included is a bonus page for you to download and use in your journals. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes and please consider leaving a review. Now let's get started 2. Class Supplies: for the class supplies. In addition to the handouts that you download, we have here the visual elements, and there are three pages. One is all text, and the other two are. Your visual elements will download and print those out. We'll talk more about that in the next chapter. I used some glue. If you're impatient and you want a quick fix, the glue stick is the best way to go. It doesn't last for years, but it will hold an image down while you're waiting to use it, and it will hold it down fairly well. If you want a more longer term solution, there's the tacky glue or this fabric. Lou and I both are very easy to work with. The downside to them is that they wet the paper, and if you use too much, so you have to be careful and it takes a little while to dry. Not terribly long, but it's not something you can work on immediately without risking damaging. The paper becomes more delicate when it's wet. I also you have a pair of sharp scissors, which I used to cut out my images. I have a bone folder, which I'll use to burnish my image when I create the collage. I have some, um, inks here that I'm gonna use if I want to distress my images and they won't distress all of them and then I have additional just paper and journals that I'm going to use. I think the fun thing with the additional paper is you use what you have in your stash neither envelopes or tags or just bits and pieces of paper scraps as well as colored paper , and that will enhance the images that we've downloaded as well. 3. The Downloads: for our Autumn Collage Elements class. The first thing you should do is go to the Project section and download and save the collage element pages. So there are three pages, and there's the first page. The second page, which both have public domain images here and the last page, has a bunch of text, little phrases and words that are very autumn like so here I just printed the mouth onto white copy paper. Each page fits quite nicely onto the copy paper. Then you make a decision. If you'd like to use card stock, and so you can use card stock in the same color white or you can use card stock in different colors, and here I have it in an off white. I have it in, like a craft paper and then a gray, and there's only a slight difference in variation. The card stock gives it a little more body, so it's a little thicker, but the colors add to the look of each of these images, so that's something you might want to consider to vary your images from what shown will also be distressing. Some of them and some will be leaving plane, so after you have your image is, the next step will be to cut your images out 4. Cutting Out the Elements: so here have cut out all my images, these air from the two pages that I've included, and it took me about 20 or 30 minutes a tip for cutting them out. Just use a pair of sharp scissors and then, as you're cutting them out, move the paper and just make little cuts with the scissors. And this way you can get some kind of what they call fussy cuts. So there's all the elements here. The visual images and then, for what I did for the text is I took the paper, which started out just like this, and then I cut them into strips. You can leave them all together and just cut out the ones that you want. But I find that by cutting them into strips, it makes it easy to see at a quick glance and get to whichever piece I want. And then what I'll do is I'll either tear the image or I'll cut it, which ever saying or word that I want depending on the look I'm going for, I'll either tear the image to get a rough edge, or I'll just snippet. And to get a straight edge, I'm and I select those when I'm working on my projects 5. Project #1: Journal Page Collage: for our first project. I'm gonna make a collage, and this is a collage I'm gonna make on a three by five inch piece of paper's just a piece of scrap paper that I cut to make a little tag. But you can also do this directly on your journal page, if you'd like. And here's one that I did, um directly on the journal page and will use the same technique. I use the two images that we have in the downloads, as well as the saying from downloads on Page three. Then I had some scrap paper that I added, and then, lastly, I added a little button. I think it's a very effective little page in my journal. So to do this, what I'd like to do is just the first thing I do is after I have all my cutouts in front of me, I choose the ones that I'm drawn to, and I found immediately I was drawn to these rich colors here, these oranges and amber's and really woodland tones I loved. And so then I went, and I found just old book page that I had that I tour up because I like the texture. I like the shape of the writing and the way it's just spaced. So I think that is a nice background. And then I found a piece of paper in my scrap pile that I felt coordinated those colors nicely. So when I'm making my collage, I want to build upon layers. So first thing I'm gonna dio is create the layers on the back of my tag in this case, but you could do it directly on your page. When I make my collage on a tag or even a page, I don't hesitate to go over the page, and then at the end, I'll trim it off, and it gives a nice effect instead of being framed within the page. If you like the look of the framed within a page, by all means, follow that method. But I'm having one that kind of runs off the page, so your eyes it really sure where it starts and where it ends. First thing to do is put on some of my text like my font here, and it's in a little off white color as well. So every piece of scrap paper on my surface work surface so that I can put my glue on. And here I am, just using glue stick and the general rule with collages is to go by odd numbers of elements. And again, all these rules can be adapted, broken, fudged a little. So I'm gonna put on two or three pieces of this, um, this font, this text wording here, book page. And if you can find a book page that matches your theme, that's great, because I'm having it just as a kind of a hidden element. A shadow element. I'm not terribly worried about what it says. If anything stands out at me that I don't want Teoh show, I'll either cross it out or I'll just choose a different page from here. I'll take some of my scrap paper because I had the Tauron Look, I'm gonna continue with that Tauron look. And if I tear it on top with my right hand carrying it down towards me, I get the white of the page. But if I tear it down towards me, I get just a rough edge. And so I like that rough edge without the white for this project. So here I have the rough edge, and again I'm tearing that towards me. But down I have that rough edge as well. So I'm gonna put this on here. I do want to make that rounded edge. I think I'll stick this one on the bottom here. And then I think I'll stick another piece over here, So down, just like that. Actually think I'll cross it over instead of the I just going back and forth. This will add a little, um, obstruction to the view here. And then I think I'll add a little peace over here. So I grabbed my biggest scrap. Just another little piece, and I think I'll add that right just like this. So now I have my odd number on my background here. My shadow, as I call it, I have, um, to text in the three scrap pages, so I'll set these aside for now. And now I want to start my adding my elements. So here is where I just kind of audition where I think they should go. If there's not enough contrast, there's too much orange play around with what I have here and because of the little darkness on this, these mushrooms kind of heavy, and I think it pulls the page down a little. So maybe I'll put that up here and then something down here to draw your I. So I think I like the way that looks. Add my glue, put my leaf down with try and burnish with just with my fingers at first all the edges here to get a nice adhesion. I will do the same thing with the mushroom element, and I want to overlap that somewhat onto the leaf. I don't want it to look like it's separate images. I want there to be a way that it big forms a cohesive look so they don't take my bone folder, put my image over and just burnish some more by flipping my image over. I won't catch any pieces. That might be, um, not glued down quite yet, and I'll be less likely to tear me image so, so far how it's coming out now. I could make a decision if I want to include another element, or I want to just go right to the words. So I'm thinking, if I include that little dragon fly, that office offers a little contrast kind of like that. Look, I'll do that. This is really playing around. Kind of intuitively. What? What images are you drawn to and how can you make them work together again? I burnish my image, so I'm pretty happy with AD. It's not complete, but it's getting there. And now, for my words, I have autumnal equinox, which I kind of like, and I have that in upper and lower case all upper case And I have the word amber. That's kind of interesting. Think it really picks up those colors? So I think I'm going to use that. I'm gonna tear the word. I think I'll do it this way. So tear it. No, I'm just gonna clipped the edge. Save this piece for another project, and then I'll find a place where I want to put my word. Maybe just right there. So now that I have all the images on my collage story attached this piece, I'll go around. I'll cut trim off any of the edge pieces. So it just flip this over Tripoli's Tripoli's edge pieces. And if I had my page in my scrapbook for my journal and I was, I had just one edge or maybe two edges to trim. I would do that as well. So now I'm left with my collage. I don't think it's quite done yet. I want to somehow tie in all the layers together. They're while they're all the shades of the amber, which I like. I want to somehow bring it all together. I could do this by adding a glaze if I wanted to do that of paint or ink. And I think I'm gonna do that with a little ink. But I'm just gonna do it around the edges, and I think that might ground it as well as tied it in. So just go around the edge here with this ink by going around the edge and making the edge darker. It lightens the center of it, which helps with the focus. So there we have our first project, just a simple collage made with our elements that we downloaded 6. Project #2: Tuck Spot: for a second project. We're gonna make a tuck spot using two images. And again I chose to that I was drawn to, and I like this stark contrast between the the Blackbird here and this beautiful botanicals . So what I did was I found a piece of paper in my scrap stash, and I cut it down to, um, almost three inches by 3.5 inches. So two and 3/4 by three inches. And because it's gonna be a tuck spot, I've only got to use two sides to adhere to my journal page. So what I want to do is on one side, and I'm gonna make this a tux spot that's attached on the page like a reverse l. So this will be attached and this will be attached, and this part will be open to tuck things. So what I want to do is create I'm score marks. Ah, half inch going straight down and then 1/2 inch going lengthwise. By using the straight edge, I just easier for me. Make a straight edge, and then I'm gonna fold over my pieces and burnish them. So I have a nice, crisp fold we'll do that in both directions again. Half an inch from the edge. And then I'm going Teoh, attach it to my page in this manner. Thies too, here and here. So I'm just gonna cut off the corner edge here and I'll do that by right at this little square here off, cut at an angle this way and this way. So this is how my piece looks before I attach it. And then when I attach it to my page, it'll go like this. And that way it gives me a little room to tuck things in fairly nicely. But a little tension toe hold them as well. From here, I'm just gonna add my image where I want and because I kind of wanted to look like sloped. I think I'm gonna go just like this and put my image on could make this tuck spot smaller if I wanted. It's add my glue, slope it out so that its highest at the part that's gonna adhere to the page of side. And then I figure where I want my bird to be, I'm knowing, but a trim off. Well, I don't even have to trim off the edge here. This tuck spot, I could just attach it to the page. That way. Um, I have to make a decision. If I want to cut off the top, I cut off the top. I'll cut off the side. But I think maybe I'll just attach it just like that and leave the overhang as additional support for the Tuck. And that allows me to put the bird either smack in the center or I can even turn it to just like this. So I don't want anything to come off the page on this side because this is where I'm gonna be tucking in my ephemera, so I think I'll put it just like that. So now my little tuck spot is completed. All I have to do is attach it to my journal page, so I think I'll just do that right now. And if I took it here, I attach it here. I can start tucking in things, and I think because it's a bird, I might use one of the feathers that we had on the sheet as well. I'll see what others. Things I'd like to put it. So right now I'm just gonna add a little glue to the border, find where I want my tuck speak spot to be on the page, and then I'll go back in with some more glue after I'm happy, that's where I want it and just did. Here the ends, the overhang to the page as well. Clean up any additional glue and here we have a nice tuck spot. If we wanted to, we could tuck anything in it. 7. Project #3 :Page Tab: for 1/3 project. We're gonna make a tab for a journal page, just something you can stick on the side of the page. So here I have a piece of scrap ribbon. It's only about three inches long, 3 to 4 inches long, and, um, it's fairly wide. But I liked it. I thought it was kind of rustic to go with the acorn and the leaf kind of folly. Artim autumnal. So I would do is just take that ribbon folded in half. It's a nice, thick ribbon, and I'm skipping a little spot of glue to hold it shut before we attach it to anything else . So this is really to make our tab. It's kind of a faux tab, Um, in that it's not going directly on the page, at least not yet. But it's the ideas it gives loop the effect of loop you want. You could add a staple here to hold it down as well. I think the global work satisfactory, though. Then I'm gonna take my two images here. I have my leaf and my acorn, and I'm gonna play around with seeing how we can put them on each other. So that they look appropriate, and I think I might distress them just a little bit. So I'll take my ink go around the edges. I think, by going around the edges, it kind of defines them a little more. And these I printed onto card stock. If you want, you could print them onto paper and then back them on the car card stock by just attaching them a card stock and cutting around. Or you could just print it onto card stock if you have that option. So then I'll just audition where I want my pieces to go. I think just like this, I want this tab to go inside the stem of the leaf so I will attach my acorn to my leaf just like that. And then here's the tab that's actually gonna go on the page that would hear it here to the page. It'll sandwich with page in between, and then we'll have our ribbon in our image on top so you won't see the back of the ribbon . You'll see this tab. So from here, no ad, I'll start layering my pieces. I'll put my glue nice spot of glue right there on the tab that's already folded, and that's only about an inch and 1/2 long, just a piece of scrap paper. And I just chose a neutral color and then I'll attach to the top of the ribbon here. I'll attach our little mini collage, and I will pull it over enough so that I can see that loop of the ribbon, burnish it well and then attach it to my journal. So here I have a journal page, and I just want to attach that tab right over here to the page so I will add a little glued to each side of the page. Put it on the page, fold it over, and then I'll just clamp it in place, take a little clip and put it in place to let it dry. If you use double sided tape, you wouldn't have to worry about clamping it down or letting it dry. But because we use glue, we're gonna let it dry this way 8. Project #4: Page Edge: for our next project. We're gonna make a page edge for journal. So what I do is I have a piece of paper here, and the important thing to remember is the height is the same height as my journal page. So that will vary depending on what journal you want to put it in. And then I made a score mark about an inch and 1/2 down, and I priest it. And this allows me many options. I could just attach it flat on the page and I have my peace, my element. I can attach it just on this piece on the page and have a tip out so that the whole thing comes out or I can attach it on the inside, kind of hooking onto the page bottom. And this way I have a pocket on the page. So I think that's the method I'm going to use. The with is up to you. I have about a three inch with here, but really any with Will dio. I wanted a deep enough that I could tuck things in this pocket either with a paper clip or just a tuck spot. So what? I'm gonna do is after I fold that crease. I'm gonna keep it close while I make my page edge. Here we have ducks and I print them onto cod card stock, and I cut out three of them again. I'm sticking with that kind of that rule of of three, the odd number for my edge. And then I have some leaves, sunflowers and some text wording as well. So the first thing I would do is I'm gonna create just a little background, a little depth and again, I'm gonna take an old page from a book and I'm just gonna strip a piece off here and again . I wanted toe overhang, at least in the beginning. And that way I'll know if I want to. I can cut it off on the edge and where I want to cut it off. So the first thing I'll do is I'll attach this piece again. I'm just using a glue stick. It's a quick way to would hear it, particularly while we're working on it. So there I have a little bit of a shadow of background. Then I'll just place my images where I want TEM. So actually, I think I'll build up from the back and I'll chop off any pieces that stick out too much. I will do that. And I kind of like the idea of some text coming through. Put these little pieces in last one duck, second duck in the third duck. So I kind of like that, and then I'll just tuck these in underneath it. So just slide my pieces to the side and it here, those pieces right away. Not certain what I'm gonna do with my text words yet, you know that this is gonna stick off a little, You know, decide later how much of that I want to trim off. I don't really want to get it caught on my journal, but at the same time, I like the way the irregular edge looks. This one will be a little easier to decide, because that stem isn't really relevant again. I'm keeping in mind that the edges right around here, so I don't want the beak to get cut off to smooth that over. And the beauty of this is I can slide this, um, sunflower, right on the edge underneath, causing a nice little image there. Nice layering effect. And I know I'm gonna put my other duck here, but I won't glue that one down just yet. Put this one the bottom one down and work my way building around it. Can I get that sunflower in for the glue dries on this stuck. Let me turn this a little bit so that it's not facing the same way this one above is They don't want that ducks right on top of each other. So there that looks fairly good right now again, pick up my paper and burnish the bottom. And then from here, before I add my text, just gonna trim off, start in the bottom here. I don't think I have anything to worry about. Maybe just the leaves. So actually, start here at the bottom and trim that off and I'll trim behind the leaf if I can get that and the same thing here behind that leaf, Turn it over. I'm not thinking about a trim right above here, just on that shadowy paper, that text paper, but I nipped a little bit of a leaf. It's OK, so from here, I've got to decide if I want to put any of these words kind of like the way the words look , um, kind of adds another element to our peace. Maybe this one should be up a little higher or even it's by the length of the word. Maybe it should be a little lower. So I think I'll have those three pieces there and again. I'm trying to tuck it slightly underneath the duck here so that it looks layered. - We go. So there we have our peace. Now to put it inside my journal, take my journal page. This is the one I intended it to go on. And so my options are to adhere it just with this page here to make a fold out, to adhere it like this to make a pocket which I like that or I could just hear it totally flat to make another piece of the page. But I think I'm gonna hear it right here just like this to make a pocket. So I'll have a tux spot. Somebody used my other glue. Does it have add the glue to the side here of the page where we made our collage on. So we have our page. Just add it to my journal, burnish it fairly well. And there I have either a little tuck spot or place as a pocket to add more things. 9. Bonus Project: Collage Pocket Download: for a bonus download. I have included a new already created collage using most of the elements we have in a few additional ones. And then there two envelopes you can print out, and then you cut trim around the edges. Now they have ah little spot here. You can either leave it whole or I like to take a hole punch. This is just a one inch hole punch and punch that little lip out, and that gives a nice little edge to remove a tag. So I just punched that out, and then I take my bone folder and I go around these gray lines and I score those lines. And then I score the bottom here, and that folds into a neat little pocket. So then I just take it over, increase it again, and in the back, just fold over a swell. Then I'll take my bone folder after I have the initial folds and go and make a nice, strong crease all around for this one. I printed it onto card stock, but you could just as well printed on to paper. So I take this and I'm just gonna attach a little bit of glue to either side Here, fold like back over it. Full decides in furnished them. Well, then you have a little pocket. You can think the edges if you'd like. I kind of like the colors there. Nice and warm here. And then I created a tag using some of the elements we had in our downloads. And you could just stick that tag in along with a few other things, if you'd like. It's kind of a fun little look. 10. Class Wrap Up: So to wrap up the class, we have all four of our projects, plus our bonus download project. So here we just created a collage. I created it onto a three by five roughly square piece of paper. But here's where I created directly onto my page in my journal. The only difference was I added a a couple more pieces of scrap paper in the background and a button, but other than that, the technique was the same. We cut out our images. We had here them to the page, and then we distressed the edge by just shading inning with a little ink for a second project, we made a tuck spot, and so we took our piece of scrap paper and folded it and scored it to create that little pocket. And then we can tuck things in it here again, using our images because we let the images overlap the intended tuck spot. It kind of creates a very pretty effective kind of blends from the background right into the tuck spot, our third project. We created this little tab. It's kind of hard to see with all the pages, but it's just a little tab using or collage elements. And this a little bit of scrap ribbon. And so when the book is closed, you'll see something peeking out, not drawing your interest. And then as you get to the page, you see the elements. And then lastly, we created the page edge right here, and you could tuck some things as well into this page. This is the way it looks on the back. Kind of a nice effect. Again, we used our elements in the same techniques for our bonus project. You just download the envelope, cut it out, score it, and you have your bonus envelope, and then you could fill it in with a tag or anything, any piece of ephemera that you like and it here it to a journal. I hope you'll post a photo of your designs in the project section so we can all see your work and the many variations that come from all the images you can download. Sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes and please consider leaving a review. Thanks for joining me today.