Masterboarding.

When I start a collage project, I like hunting and gathering up whatever stuff I might want to use and having it at hand in a big pile in front of me. The process of finding stuff means combing through a bunch of drawers and boxes and accordion files until I have a nice pile. Well, once I'm done with the project, I usually already have the next project in mind and give about 2.5 flips about "restocking" the leftover bits, so I just push them off to the side....to collect until they annoy me enough to do something about them.

Such a time came this morning, when I looked over at the the accumulated bins and box tops holding leftover paper bits and shook my head....

*sigh*

Now, the Darth Vader box at the very end holds prop toys from my photography days.

But the lid is flipped over and holding paper things I recently received in some mail swaps.

The plastic boxes in the middle...the bottom one has scavenged parts from incoming mail art envelopes. 

(That's another post for another day.)

The box on top of that is stuff I've culled to send out in mail swaps.

The overflowing box on top of them...and the full lid in the foreground are all scraps.

With those scraps, I made a pile of postcards, wee!

The best thing to do with a bunch of scraps is to make a masterboard.

A masterboard is simply a large artwork cut down into smaller artworks.

I do it UH LOT. It's my favorite way to make postcards because it's very much an "anything goes" process.

First step to starting a masterboard is getting a surface to work on.

I went BIG and used a sheet of 14"x17" bristol paper.

Then it was just a matter of plastering paper bits to it.

Masterboards are a process of building layers.

You keep going and going and going until you stop.

It doesn't matter how it looks at any step along the way because it will end up being AWESOME.

When I was tired of gluing paper bits down, I added some washi tape pieces.

Also filled in some blank spots with simple Sharpie lines.

Every layer counts, whether you end up covering something later or not.

Layers build texture and texture is the best part of a collage.

Use different types of paper - newspaper, glossy magazine pages, tissue paper.

Especially if you plan on adding paint at some point.

They all catch the paint differently.

When I make masterboards, it's usually mostly collage with a little paint...

or mostly paint with a little collage. This one was mostly collage with lots of cool images, patterns and text that I didn't want to obscure with paint.

I added ghostly white layers with a big poster paint marker.

I schmeared on acrylic craft paint with a spatula.

The paint gathers on paper edges as you drag it over the collage.

I used Sharpie paint pens for hash marks and hand-cut stencils for more shapes.

Once I was satisfied with the mixed media layers, the masterboard was mostly done.

I spot-set the paint and pencil details with workable fixatif.

Then it was time to cut!

First and foremost, I cut out the "choice" postcards.

Of course I wanted the images of the clown and the kids in the gas masks to stay intact.

I also liked how "what's inside" looked with the manga dude.

And "individual" with the lightning strike underneath...

Survey the land of your masterboard and see what pops out.

Or cut it uniformly. Who cares?

The remainder of the masterboard got chopped into small postcards.

Smaller than I usually like, but still cool.

I may add more stuff to them...images, words, stickers.

Did I use up all the leftovers, and thus save myself from having to put them away?