A peace of me
For our 2025 Christmas card I created a large piece of abstract mixed media collage art that would be cut up into sections to make a festive greetings card. Every recipient would then have a piece of original art that was connected to a bigger collection. It was appealing to me that family and friends would have in their homes these fragments that have this link beyond our kinship.
The whole piece before it was cut up to make cards
How did I make it?
The substrate is a length of wallpaper about 1.5 metres long. The paper I chose had a Moorish-style pattern plus some wood texture – in some areas you can still see this showing through although I did add a layer of gesso over it to help even out the surface for paint.
Before I started I marked up the reverse side with a grid of 48 squares, 120 x 120mm.
My intention was to create something colourful and festive so I began with some orange and yellow marks. I then used some evergreen sprigs to print with in dark green. I continued to add bright colours: pink and lilac. My tendency is to go maximalist but I didn’t want to do this too soon so I went over it all (mostly) in a white wash.
I then collected my collage pieces which comprised more wallpaper – in a white and silver textured pattern torn in random strips (I used this in Celebration and liked the effect); and tissue and newspaper ephemera (some from our trip to Italy in October) cut into circles to represent baubles. These and some black paint marks and patterned stamps were designed to balance out the very colourful aspects and add more texture.
Next was more colour however! Blue and green plus glitter and gold paint for a really festive feel.
Another ‘reining in’ step came next with white baubles, cut from receipts, pharmaceutical inserts and so on.
This was done over many days as a lot of drying time was needed between layers.
This large piece was then cut up into the marked squares and each one was tweaked a little to ensure the composition of individual pieces could stand in isolation.
After a couple of layers of sealant, they were glued on to blank cards. Then of course there was the job of writing and posting them. Recipients are invited to return them (postage paid) for re-gifting if they don’t want to keep them. Money saved from buying cards is being donated to Shelter.
