Transform Six Types of Papers into a Cohesive Collage Series

December 3, 2024

Today we’re going to take six types of collage papers from my 6 most recent art demos and turn them into a cohesive collage series.

As part of expanding my Tune In Tuesday collage collection, I’m planning to add a couple of new collages to the mix. Each mini-collection I’ve created so far has featured at least five different types of collage papers, and I’ve kept a consistent thread by using phthalo blue-green shade and hansa yellow light as my go-to primary colors, plus black and white to increase the range of values. By using a very limited palette, all of the collage papers will look unified when used for a collage, even though the collage papers are made using different techniques.

In this mini-series I’ll be using six types of collage papers: coffee paper, washable glue scrape paper, household mark maker paper, stencil papers from my new collection, and crackle paper. Yep, all of these very diverse papers will find their way into one collage!

Here’s how I start:

Sort the papers: First, I pull out the ones I absolutely love and set aside the “meh” ones.
Organize by value: Next, I sort everything into light, medium, and dark values. This gives me a great mix of tones to work with, ensuring my collages have contrast and balance.
Mix and match: When building this collage series, I make sure to use at least one piece of each type of paper from each of the 6 types of collage papers. It’s like weaving together different textures and techniques into a story.

The best part of this process is seeing how these seemingly random papers come together into something cohesive and beautiful. Each piece in the entire Tune In Tuesday series looks uniquely different, while still appearing connected to the others, like they’re part of the same family.

Here’s the process I followed to create this mini-series:

Cut a 6×6 inch piece of Bristol paper to use as the base for my collage.
Select and place my favorite collage paper as the first element.
Search for a contrasting collage paper to the first, and place this second element.
Continue this process as I look for papers that contrast and complement each other, and playing with different orientations and sizes to keep things interesting.
Once everything is laid out in the design, I glue everything down with matte gel. Once everything has dried, I check if anything needs more glue or needs adjusting. Often I what I call a finishing touch piece of paper, in this case a thin white circle on both collages.

The 13 collages in my Tune In Tuesday collection represents 32 different types of collage papers and looks like part of a series because of the consistent color palette.

So grab your papers, get sorting, and let’s make some mixed media magic.

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