Tag: Collage

Crafty Christmas

December 28, 2025

Dear Liza,

This year, our Portland family got together for dinner, a movie, and collage. Yep, collage.

First, of course, was dinner. Slow cooker pork shoulder, lots of veggies, and Hawaiian rolls. Auntie Bridgett’s beautiful Christmas plates made everything sparkle!

When we were all sufficiently stuffed, the party divided into two. The fellas watched Die Hard on the TV, because they wanted to, and it was Christmas. Not my favorite, but it’s not just my Christmas.

Meanwhile, we ladies went crafty. I finally passed my wedding dress (made by your great grandma Billie in 1974) off to Kestrel. Although it fit her, I don’t think she will wear it as it is, to get married or for any other reason. But it seems a perfect blank canvas for some textile crafting. We’ll see what comes of it.

Then we settled down at the table for some collage. Kestrel helped me haul some boxes of collage papers and other supplies down from my art closet, and we went at it.

One of the boxes was a collection of vintage images from old Life magazines and publications from the Oregon Historical Society, and that determined a theme.

The other box was Jennifer Coile’s Art of the Met calendar pages, and they played together well. Here is Katie’s creation…

Here is Kestrel’s,

And here is mine. I love how creative we got with just old papers, lots of chatter, and some glue.

All in all, it felt like a very successful Christmas. Food, fun, and family, wrapped up in our weird personalities and seeing how everyone is growing into themselves.

The only thing that could have been better is if you had been here.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Bit by Bit with Ruthie

December 18, 2025

Dear Liza,

Ruthie Inman is not just an old and dear friend, she is an artist who manages to challenge and open my brain every time we get together on ZOOM. At our four-times-a-month Zoom classes, she comes up with projects that expand my idea of What Art can be.

This month, we started by cutting out and painting nine rectangles of similar (but not identical) sizes and painting each of them two colors.

Then we cut circles that would fit into the rectangles, sectioned, and colored them. There were also circles with loosely-goosey spirals. It was an intriguing set of things, but I didn’t see it turning into much.

I didn’t like the flat colors, so I gave the rectangles some flicks of black and the circles, some grey. They looked more folksy and organic.

The next class, things got more interesting as we started stacking our shapes. Seeing which colors went well together, I altered some, adding black lines or white highlights. International stamps and Gelli prints came into play.

We cut and added Corrugated cardboard circles, to give our creations some height. With a few more dots and lines, I made the pieces feel cohesive and right.

And then, what to do with all these bits? I knew if I kept them separate, they would get lost. Ruthie suggested laying them in an interesting combination in our Art Journals.

Since my Art Journal is also my ‘what I did today’ Journal, these lovely rectangles became part of December 2025.

I really like how this project turned out! I keep learning to see art better and make it better.

Love,

Grandma Judy

No King’s Collage

October 22, 2025

Dear Liza,

Once I had rested and recovered from the long, crowded No King’s March, I wanted to capture the spirit of it for my Journal. I mean, how often does one get to be part of such a gathering? I wrote about it, of course, but words were missing what I was looking for.

Gathering bits from the collage box and junk mail, I found lots of ideas, from the silly to the civic. Scooby Doo certainly captured the goofy spirit of the day, and a Liberty torch seemed appropriate. The random animals represent all the costumes and pets that were on display.

I needed The Willamette River, of course, and green grass of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. But this was definitely a CITY march…

So, skyscrapers cut from the recent voter’s pamphlet got added. But now the sky looked too empty! I tried a cool tissue paper Gelli print, but it was just too much. And where should that bicycle go?

I finally settled on a dot-printed sky of teal blue, made using a piece of plastic shelf liner Ruthie Inman gave me years ago. I like how it fills the space but doesn’t overpower the scene. The long blue wisps in the sky are slivers cut from the same magazine page as the river.

I like how the collage captures the urban, goofy, joyous feel of the city and the crowd. and I am grateful to have been there.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Yet Another Collage

October 10, 2025

Dear Liza,

You know me, I get on a tear and can’t let go… so this week, I made another door collage. I chose some strong pinks and blues from Gelli prints, art magazines, school fair tickets, and an old copy of The New Yorker

The first stage was pretty straight forward, laying the blocks of color down so they complemented each other. I found the ‘doormat’ as part of another cartoon.

Then, flipping through a new stack of magazines, I found this very informal portrait of Fredrick Nietzsche and decided that this would be the door to his new house.

I liked it a lot, but there was a lot left to do. I took a day off and got back to it.

The door needed definition, so I cut thin bits of a dark blue. The name needed something to make it stand out. And I wanted to acknowledge Mr. Nietzsche, so I hunted up some quotes. Many of them were heavy and philosophical, but I found one that fit perfectly. “Inside every man is a small boy who wants to play.”

But how to put it on the page?

I couldn’t find a playful, hidden way…. Until, in my head, I asked Ruthie Inman. “How would you hide words on a page?”

And I knew immediately. A flap, or a pocket, or some paper folded shenanigan! Can you see it in the upper right?

It took some figuring and hunting for the right flowers, but just before lunch, I got it assembled.

Then I added some more flowers inside, so it looks nice open or closed.

I am very pleased with it.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Evolution of a Collage

September 30, 2025

Dear Liza,

I needed to make a cover for my new Journal, and I wanted a collage. It’s a good size, 9x 12, so I had plenty of room to play with. I found a heavy tag backing from an old watercolor tablet to use as my base.

First, I pulled tons of colors and images from my collage boxes and Jennifer Coile’s gift of museum calendars. I trimmed them and laid them down, seeing who played nicely and who didn’t.

This is always a long process with lots of internal dialogue. I will make a decision to include a piece… in this case, that impressionist woman, and it takes a long time before I admit that it’s just not working. She was both getting lost and cluttering up the picture.

So, in goes the Egyptian hippo. Better, clearer, more focused. Still too many images. Pull them out. But where do the flowers go? Up, down? More discussion.

Every piece is chosen, placed, stared at, accused, forgiven, moved and shifted.

The last bit to be decided was the sun ( or moon). I wanted the blue to balance the bright hippo, but it looked too heavy. The circle cut from a rejected paper worked well, and the blue triangle set it off.

When I had stared more, had lunch, looked again and still liked it, it was time to glue it down. I went in sections, the top stripes together first, but not to the base paper.

I glued the hippo and flowers together, but not down yet. This makes placing the focal points less nerve-wracking.

When I was finally willing to commit, it all went together quickly. UHU glue stick, tweezers (so my fingers don’t get so gluey) and voila! Done!

After dinner I came back to admire it, and realized it wasn’t done yet. It felt stagnant. I decided to sleep on it.

By morning, I realized it needed a bit of movement. Again reaching for papers that had been put aside, I punched small dots and used a piece of string to figure out the line I wanted, and glued them down.

Now it was done. A coat of Mod Podge for a top coat and all was ready! Once it was dry I used Mod Podge to give a good adhesion between the heavy tagboard and the original, floppy journal cover. Under heavy books for a few hours, then out to finish drying, and it will be ready by the time I need it.

And this concludes our tour of the creative process.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Flowers for the Table

August 27, 2025

Dear Liza,

Sometimes I need to make a few tries at a project before I get it right. At our last ZOOM art group, Ruthie Inman had us start this vase of flowers, made with the windows from business envelopes. Mine turned out really tiny, about three inches high, and I wasn’t crazy about it.

The other members of the group used bigger windows from bigger envelopes, and therefore, bigger flowers. I liked theirs better, so I found just such an envelope and gave the project a second chance.

Ruthie also suggested creating surroundings for the vase, to ‘give it a place to be’. So I started building my scene. I started with the inside of that same envelope, which had a striped pattern. I gave it a thin coat of a really pale lavender so it would fade into the background.

It took a few days to draw, cut, and watercolor the flowers, long stemmed yellow and orange daisies. To go with that bright yellow, I found an abstract blue page out of an art magazine for the billowing curtains. It was starting to look like a picture.

I remembered that Shirley, from the ZOOM group, had used blue paper to make the water in her vase. I wanted mine to be transparent, so I mixed some aquamarine acrylic paint with some glue and painted it on the plastic. It stuck!

Then I used the same color for the sky through the window, a soft yellow paper made the window frame, and graph paper made a nice tablecloth.

I now had all the pieces for my picture, but I wasn’t ready to glue anything down yet, because I didn’t like where they were. It felt static, even with the curtains billowing in the wind. So I walked away and thought about it overnight.

The next day I moved the window a bit to the right and the vase a bit to the left, loved it, and glued it down. Finally, I glued the stems into the vase, but left the flowers loose, so they can flop a bit.

Another Ruthie Inman inspiration, all done!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Some Cut and Paste Fun

August 24, 2025

Dear Liza,

I continue to recover from shingles, and as with all recoveries, I have good days and bad days. On bad days I just sleep and watch architectural history videos.

But when I feel better, I do like to make a bit of something, and I use what is laying around. The other day, Auntie Bridgett brought home a great pile of old baseball cards from the 1990s. After I made sure they weren’t going to make me a millionaire, they became collage fodder.

First, I glued the cards together with four edge pieces so they’d be easier to work with. I use UHU because it dries fast and doesn’t make the paper curl. Then I collaged the four as though they were one piece, sticking bits down in whatever way seemed best.

I’d seen something like this done by Zoe Walker in our ZOOM group, and I thought I’d give it a try. I laid four of the cards face down, chose some leftover papers from other projects, and went to it.

There are so many things I love about collage. There’s really no wrong way to do it, just whatever looks right to you. I try a few bits together to see which colors play well together, and wait to put the most detailed bits on near the end.

Once I got to this point, I decided to cut the cards apart and see how they looked.

I liked them! But I was wearing out and they still needed… something.

So I hunted up bits from old magazines to freshen the color, put in dots, and I was done.

I’m not sure what to call them, or where they will go, but I managed to get some rest, stay happy, and use up some scrap paper. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Love,

Grandma Judy

More Gelli Fun, and a Rolloff Page

August 16, 2025

Dear Liza,

Every now and then, I go back into the Art Closet and try another few Gelli prints. I am trying to be more methodical so I can photograph the steps as I go and learn what works for me.

Friday, I started with a bright red plate and made this cool pattern with a cardboard vegetable tray from the market.

Then, because I always forget that yellow is transparent, I tried to lay some down. I added some orange, to try and make my point.

Once everything was good and dry, I put some black on and rolled it out. I like the print, but wish the yellow and orange were more visible.

While I was Gelli printing, I used a page in my Art Journal as the rolloff page.

And while you and I were chatting in Saturday, I cut some black paper into a simple sunset landscape. I think it’s done, but I’ll have a look tomorrow.

More printing and snipping tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

More Art with Ruthie

August 8, 2035

Dear Liza,

Between her busy art gallery (Artful Journey in Peoria, Illinois) and my Shingles, it has been a long time since I’ve sat down for a ZOOM art session with Ruthie Inman in Illinois.

So when we finally got together this week, we yakked and cut and collaged until I was totally worn out! Ruthie had chosen a very fitting collage project.

She had us building a small accordion book to glue into an existing art journal. I am still writing most days in the Journal I was keeping on our France trip, and always welcome the chance to add something interesting.

We measured some light-to-medium card stock about 3 by 5 inches, and joined 5 pieces together by their one inch flaps.

Since it was going in my France Journal, I chose bits and pieces that reminded me of the gardens, museums, restaurants and Emergency Rooms we had visited.

I used quite a few pages from Jennifer’s donated art calendar, adding them to ‘failed’ Gelli prints and roll-off papers, bits of an old Time/Life book on medicine, and pages from falling apart French language Agatha Christie mysteries. When I’m totally happy with it, I’ll stick it in my Journal.

I just love sticking bits of nonsense together to tell a story!

Doesn’t everybody?

Love,

Grandma Judy

Filling up My Travel Journal

May 25

Dear Liza,

When I travel, I walk miles every day and take way too many photographs. And since I know I won’t remember everything, I write and draw and collage into my travel journal. Here is the page that shows our train ride journey from Charles de Gaul Airport to Lyon.

I try to write with accuracy about where we go and what we see, and how I feel about it. But my art …. Is somewhat less accurate.

And that’s okay! Sometimes I work from my photos, trying to make things look just right…

.

And sometimes it’s more of an impressionist collage sort of thing, like this page filled with coffee bags.

And MAPS!! I love maps, and they help me make sense of what I saw and where I was. Our long hike up the Croix-Rousse neighborhood ended up looking like a board game.

And then I feel the need to sketch some more. It’s my book, after all, isn’t it?

The problem (is it a problem? Or an opportunity?) is that my Journal is filling up fast. I will need another in a week or so. Do I get the same size? This one is 8.5 by 11 inches, and I like having the big pages to play with. Since I don’t carry it with me, it’s not really cumbersome.

I’m sure Bridgett will help me find an art store that will help me solve my dilemma.

Love,

Grandma Judy