Glue.

Glue is a hot topic for paper crafters, collagers and mail artists. I'm a glue nerd myself, but I don't think I've ever talked in depth about it here. Seeing as I'm hosting a public collage postcard swap on Swap-bot, now seems like a good time to get into it.

I've been a loyal Elmer's CraftBond Glue Stick user for years now. It's my main glue for collages - postcards, envelopes, ATCs, artbooks, etc. I tried UHU once in the early days and didn't care for it, so it's been Elmer's all the way since. I like it for a few reasons, not just because it has good sticking power, but it has a nice consistency (goes on smooth and doesn't crumble), it's not messy and it's readily available at different stores.

I know a lot of people complain about glue sticks - they say the glue doesn't stick well. To be honest, I don't believe their problems are because of the glue, but because of application. I've received mail art myself with papers flapping off in the breeze and you can clearly see that the paper has no evidence of ever being glued. When you use glue sticks, you need to REALLY get in there and rub it everywhere, multiple times. 

My glue palette is a big office supply catalog sat in a short repurposed cardboard box so I can easily grab it and move it around when I need to.

Gluing on this provides a bit of cushion so the glue stick meets the paper more evenly without having to press so hard. When a page gets glued up too much, I rip it off and move on to the next one. The old card is my scraper/smoother.

Some more tips for collage mail art:

• If you're using any kind of glossy materials, it's good to use sandpaper to scuff up the sides that are going to be glued. This'll give the paper some tooth to grip with. I get sanding blocks from the Dollar Tree - they're a lot easier to handle than sandpaper (sandpaper paper cuts are awful).
• Use papers of similar thickness/weight. This helps create a uniform surface that won't snag in machinery. You can thin out thick papers by carefully peeling off layers. I do this with postcards when I rather use the images in art (or when I goof up filling out a cool postcard and still want to use the image).
• Though if you do want to mix in thicker papers, just use a heavier glue. I use Aleene's Tacky Glue when I need to apply papers that are thicker compared to others in a collage - or for small/fiddly bits.
• With every piece you glue down, burnish the heck out of it! I'll put the lid back on the glue stick and use the top of it to squash the papers down thoroughly or use a plastic card to smooth papers out.
• Before you mail something out, run your hand over it and check at the edges for any papers that aren't glued all the way and touch up with more glue where needed. If you can pull it up, postal machinery can pull it up (and wreck the shit out of it). 

This is the "lay of the land" of the collage postcard I made while thinking about this post. For the most part it's a smooth layer of multiple papers. The punches are from drywall tape which has a heavy-duty glue already applied to it so I'm not all that worried about them. The thin black strips in the middle make up a quote and were applied with Aleene's.

I don't usually seal my collage postcards - at least not usually with a heavy sealer.

If it's a mixed media collage that has a lot of paint layers, then I'll seal with Mod Podge.

If I just add some pencil doodles or stencil a few dots with paint, I'll spot-seal with some sort of spray varnish. Otherwise collage postcards (and envelopes) go out as-is.

That's my glue post - as it pertains to mail art at least.
Hope it's useful in some way.

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a cube.

I really enjoy displaying as much of the art I get in trades as I possibly can. Especially in my craft room, but it spreads all over the house, too. When I came across this project a few years ago I was immediately attracted to it because, unlike ATCs and postcards, it didn't require anything extra to display.

I'm talking about these "collage cubies" -- a project created and outlined by Chris Dunmire. I held a swap for them back when I first came across the tutorial and had hoped to make it a regular collectible thing like ATCs, but it didn't pan out. I'm very good at self-starting projects and completing them, but returning to it and making the project a regular thing in my repertoire is something I do not have a knack for. I just steamroll on to the next project. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Annnnnyway, I'm returning to this project now and hosting a swap for it again. This time any medium goes for the cubie, not just collage, so I've dubbed them "creative cubies". Follow the link above for the full tutorial and templates; read on to see how I whipped up my sample this morning.

The first time I made a cubie, I printed the template directly on cardstock and collaged each panel. This time I wanted to do it a little differently and a little more quickly. You don't always have to spend hours on a project for it to be fulfilling and artistic.

I printed the template on regular printer paper and then glued that to a sheet of paint palette paper I recently liberated from my palette pad. Using palette paper gives me the look and feel of paint without having to go through the process of painting.

I glued the papers back to back, this way I didn't have to spend time cutting out the template, tracing around it and cutting it out again. Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

I cut it out once and scored it using the lines on the template.

Then I loosely assembled the cube just to see what I was working with.

I finally figured out what I was going to add to it...

I stamped some background textures: dots, text, paisley.

Then added some Fornasetti girl faces and finished with a quote.

Ta-da!

I think it took me 30 minutes? IDK, I don't time myself.

I like it and it's already found a home on my shelf.

Later, Vader.

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?