happy gram...

When I read the email that said I'd made it onto Tammy Tutterow's design team it felt like I'd received a happy gram!

I love her stamps- her handwriting is just beautiful and oh, how I wish it were mine! What I wanted to do was use this stamp on a collage but I worried about how the stamped image would work with the uneven surface that layers of paper present. And then... I had an idea!

What about stamping onto a piece of tissue paper? Would it work? Would it look like it had been stamped onto the surface of the canvas? I was excited to try it.

I like to begin a collage with a loose idea of where things might go. Here is the 'audition' of some flowers that had been fussy cut...

Next I covered the canvas base with some vintage sheet music, a postcard image and some paint. No, the paint doesn't look like much. Yes, it always begins this way but it won't stay like that much longer...

Gesso is the secret. It makes everything better! It just kind of melds everything together...

After that all I had to do was add the flowers...

And a fairy...

It's nice when the images wrap around all the sides wherever you can. 

Now I was ready for the fun part! I stamped the image onto the tissue and tore around the edges, brushed a layer of matte medium onto the canvas and...

The tissue laid down smoothly on top and just kind of melted into the whole thing. 
I LOVE THIS TECHNIQUE. 
So happy I got to use her lovely sentiment on a collage- now my brain is swimming with new ideas! This is one technique I'll be using over and over.

xo,