You will need:
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- Surface to apply collage to
- Magazines or just about any thin, smooth 2 dimensional material
- Scissors
- Rubber cement glue
- Large paint brush approx 2-4 inches wide
- Polyurethane
Collage finishing your furniture & other surfaces
One way to make your furniture unique is to finish the surface with a collage. The collage goes underneath the polyurethane. This will protect it, leaving the surface hard and a bit shiny. When I did these collaged objects my theme was old comicbook ads. In the 70's and 80's there were a ton of funny, laughable little ads in comics for things like books on how to command other people "using only your mind", or buy x-ray glasses and see through people's clothes.How
Make sure the surface you want to do the collage on is clean.
If you have any crumbs on the surface, when you are done there will be little
bumps sealed unerneath the surface.Just go through old magazines about things you're interested in and clip out the images or whatever you like. You can organize the clippings how you want them on the surface, or just improvise as you go along. Get the rubber cement glue (one with a brush attached to the lid is good) and brush a nice amount of glue on the back of a clipping and put it on the surface. Don't leave any air bubbles, gently flatten out any air pockets without smushing all the glue out from underneath it. Start preparing the next clipping with glue and when you are done, any excess glue from the previous clipping should have dried by now and you can gently run it off with your finger.
So when you're done pasting and clipping, let it dry for about 30 mins. Then it's time to slap on the polyurethane. Stir the polyurethane with a stick or something to mix up the settled portions, get that nice big brush and brush it on. Try not to lift up any corners of the clips when brushing over it. If a corner pops up just quickly smush it back down with your finger and then brush over it. Don't brush too long or it will start to dry and any streaks may harden. If you have finished brushing before it starts to harden, the surface will smooth itself out. The surface may not be completely flat until your 3 or 4th coat so don't worry if isn't completely flat after the first coat. Let the first coat dry over night then sand it lightly on the top to smoothen out any bubbles or dust bits that got caught in the liquid when drying. (If you don't sand after every coat, every bump will grow larger.) Apply a second coat and a third with sanding inbetween each coat. You can continue coats but don't go too overboard because any contrast and vivid color in your image clippings will start to diminish because of the slighly yellowish appearance of some brands of polyurethane.
Collage works well on guitar surfaces! The image is of my guitar. You only have to take off the strings to apply the collage. You don't even have to collage the whole surface entirely; maybe just one picture or two. That can be a good replacement for having stickers on your guitar that can start to peel off after a while, especially on the pick-guard area.
Other ideas-
- Wooden suitcases
- Wooden jewelry boxes
- Fully flat Doors
- Picture frames
- Finished photo collage on thin wood panel
It is good to have a square surface to work with because it's easier to do the corners. (you can imagine to cutting I did for the round stool. You can even buy unfinished furniture and apply the collage finish to it and save some money. But I warn you, it is time consuming to do an entire surface of, say, a table including all the legs and everything. So what you might want to do with something like a table is finish the whole thing with wood stain and polyurethane-except the desired areas for collage finishing like the table top. Or you can finish the whole thing and then apply the table top collage- either way is fine. A table top collage in a lounge or livingroom can be a great conversation piece for your company.