I love using my scraps of fabric to make little cards and works of art to give as gifts. I’ve been an avid fuser for a long time, thanks to Laura Wasilowski for giving me permission to fuse! As I was adding the interview with Cas Holmes on the site, I was enamored with her work – I needed to learn more. Off to Amazon to buy three of her books. She uses diluted wall paper paste to work on her collages. Needing to learn more, I started playing. Here is how to make a collage with wall paper paste.

The consistency of the diluted wall paper paste is important. Too thick, and it bulks up when it dries, too thin and if you have a lot of layers, if you are manipulating the piece, they might come loose. Then, there is just right. It didn’t take me long to get that right consistency. Watch the video below and you can see the viscosity that works well for me. My ratio is about 2 parts water and 1 part wall paper paste.

Start by wetting your surface with a light coating of the diluted wall paper paste.

Then, start having fun and adding your elements. I’m making some little bird cards to send to some of my friends and family. Here, I started with a strip of fabric as the ground.

After you put each piece down, put another light layer of the diluted wall paper paste on it. What is great with this method of collage is that you can easily pick up and move the pieces around while wet, and when dry you can peel them up if you change you mind! With fusing, you are pretty much committed once you take the iron to your work.

Here I added the little bird body.

Then I added the belly for the bird.

Next is adding his (or her!) little wing.

And add a little beak. No scrap is too small when you begin working in this method!

Let it dry overnight. I have tried doing some early in the day thinking I would be able to work on them later in the day, and they were still a little damp.

After the collages are dry, I like to thread sketch around the pieces to add character and hold down the piece for good. Then, add a little hand stitching. On these cards, I added some Daisy’s. Learn more about the Daisy Embroidery Stitch on Create Whimsy.

Here are some pictures of the finished cards. I worked in batch mode and made fifteen of them to send out. A little bit of love and good thoughts were put into each one of them.