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Peony and Parakeet

Fly to Your Inner World and Color the Emotion

A Step by Step

Fun Designs from Decorative Papers

Kira Surface Pattern by Peony and Parakeet

Were you ready for the color bomb? I just could not resist creating this design with the vibrancy that is almost inappropriate. Hopefully, you are like me and need to get your overdose of colors and patterns now and then!

Collage Elements

I have created this surface pattern from handmade collage elements. I often mention how I create single decorative elements which I use in collage art or art journaling later. This time, I made a pattern that is based on those odd elements. These elements are like mini collages. They were made by cutting handmade decorated papers and adding some doodling with markers.

Decorative Collage Elements by Peony and Parakeet

The elements might look complicated but are super simple to make:

1) Combine few paper pieces.
2) Add details with markers.
3) Cut the combined piece in half.
4) Repeat the previous steps changing some of the pieces as you go.

Cutting and combining the cut pieces repetitively is fun, and the result is like a mini quilt. Especially if you add seams with markers like I have done.

Decorative Elements by Peony and Parakeet

Surface Pattern

When creating a surface pattern, you also need something in the background unless you will put the elements tightly together. I wanted to add the background to make the design more interesting. The plain black background was something that I considered first. But it looked too separate from the pieces.

Luckily I save all kinds of doodles, even the ugly ones. I found a file called “blue mess,” a scanned image of the paper which I made a long time ago.

Background pattern for Kira surface pattern

At the time I had thought this doodle was horrible, but now it would be just fine!

Kira surface pattern, a repeat, by Peony and ParakeetI processed my scanned images at Photoshop image processing software. At Photoshop I created a solid colored background, added the blue mess as the second layer and changed its color. Then I removed the white background from each of the four decorative elements and added a stroke to each element.

The repeat was created so that one decorative element is in the middle, two at sides and the fourth one at the corners. It takes some accuracy to place the elements so that they match when the design is repeated. It would have been easier to have each element separate, but I wanted to create a sort of appliqued look.

If you do not make a commercial pattern, you can just create an artwork manually instead of composing a repeatable pattern on the computer.

Here’s the design again, with more muted colors. This design reminds me of an old quilt, colors faded a bit unevenly but still suitable to be the centerpiece of any room.

Kira 2 Surface Pattern by Peony and Parakeet

I call this pattern Kira.

Create more hand-drawn collages: Buy Doodled Luxury!

Fabric Collages

A collage made from fabric pieces, by Peony and Parakeet. See the instructions to make fabric collages!
The idea for this card came from the pile of fabric scraps that I have. I began to wonder: could I use these instead of papers to create fabric collages?

Fabric scraps in a drawer

Fabric Collages – A School Project from the Past

I also remembered one happy moment from the childhood. I was about 10 years old. A teacher asked us to bring fabric scraps to school. We were asked to cut the fabric into pieces and create a collage from them. My schoolmates were not excited but I was thrilled. I cut the fabrics into tiny pieces and began to glue them on a paper.

Fabric collage, a detail

When I had finished the collage, I was very pleased with it. I had also had such a good time. Little did I know that I would be cutting tiny pieces whole my life – that the moment I picked the scissors was to follow me many times afterwards!

A fabric collage made by Paivi from Peony and Parakeet, in the age of 10

1) Cut and Glue the Fabric Pieces

The supplies for fabric collages are simple: scissors, glue, paper, fabrics.

Creating a fabric collage, by Peony and Parakeet

2) Add a Layer of Gel Medium

Because my collage was small, I wanted to add some fine details and extra layering. To be able to do that, I covered the first layer with the gel medium.  When dried, I would be able to doodle with markers and create dimensions by adding more layers.

Creating a fabric collage, adding layers with gel medium, by Peony and Parakeet

My favorite is Golden Soft Gel Gloss but any gel medium will do. Even if I am not a big fan of buying more stuff, purchasing this is a good investment. You can use gel medium not only to create surfaces but also glueing paper pieces when making paper collages.

Unfinished fabric collage, doodling on the gel medium surface, a technique by Peony and Parakeet

3) Add Doodling

When gel medium dries it becomes transparent and you can doodle with thin markers or gel pens on it. Make sure to dry it first throughly!

4) Add More Details From Fabric Pieces

Adding gel medium on fabric surface. See instructions for creating fabric collages! By Peony and Parakeet.

After doodling on the first layer, I wanted to add details like the house in the middle. After constructing the house with fabric pieces and glue, I added gel medium to the details to add some doodling on them.

The photo below shows how the fabric is layered. A part of the card is covered with gel medium and feels like plastic. There are also fabric pieces without any coverage on the top and they feel soft.

A fabric collage card by Peony and Parakeet

You do not need a sewing machine to enjoy working with fabrics!

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How to Draw a Rose?

Cover Yourself with Roses, a paper collage by Peony and Parakeet

I have had a bit tough time in life so I wanted to create a page for the art journal where I show some gentleness towards myself. I created this page with photos of me as an adult and as a child. Sometimes being an adult is necessary but it’s good to remember that we still can hold onto the playful child, even if she needs to go to the background from time to time. I had a crazy idea to cover the characters of the page with roses. Many roses! Which brings in the question:

How to draw a rose?

And I needed a quick version because I wanted to have plenty of them on the page. Roses can look pretty complicated, like this one that I took a photo of when I visited a rosary last summer.

Rose

When looking at the rose photos, I soon discovered a very quick way to draw a simple rose. Start with the spiral. Then continue to transform the round shape to a square and finally think about a hexagon or octagon. I made a short video which shows how to do it in practice.

These roses are very easy, nothing fancy, but if you make a lot of them, they will look great!

Drawing Roses by Peony and Parakeet

I used markers to color the roses. If you make the center darker and use many colors, they will look more natural. If you don’t want to cut your roses, they will work great as a background paper motifs too.

Cover Yourself with Roses, by Peony and Parakeet

This rose garden costs nothing! Have fun covering yourself or your loved ones with roses!

Create more hand-drawn collages: Buy Doodled Luxury!

Creating Collage Mandalas

Blue Eye Mandala by Peony and Parakeet

If you like cutting papers with scissors, create collage mandalas! And if you need more inspiration for cutting, read this post first: 5 Reasons to Enjoy Cutting Paper with Scissors)

Circles Are Everywhere

Daisy flower

For some people, mandalas have spiritual meaning. They usually represent universe or unity. As the word “mandala” means “circle” they can be almost anything and seen almost anywhere. I am often inspired by the circular shapes that I see in nature. Mandalas are usually symmetric, so they are surprisingly fast to make. The mandalas that I made are very straight-forward, yet eye-catching.

Basic Instructions for Creating Collage Mandalas

Creating collage mandalas from hand cut papers, by Peony and Parakeet

1) Cut a centerpiece and other pieces (3 to 5 different shapes, 6 to 12 pieces each) from decorated papers. I cut the pieces freely with scissors not worrying too much about their similarity.
2) Glue the pieces on the solid background paper. I used Golden Soft Gel Gloss gel medium, but you can use almost any glue. Measure the middle point of the background paper and start attaching the pieces from there.
3) Draw some more shapes with color pencils.
4) Doodle the finest decorations with a white gel pen and a thin black marker.

Red Energy Mandala by Peony and Parakeet

If you study my mandalas carefully, you’ll see how carelessly I have cut the shapes. They are not identical or perfect. I think that the result is more human when using scissors instead of cutting machines or shape cutters. Look at that photo of the daisy flower again, doesn’t the flower look more like hand-cut than machine-cut?

Blue Eye Mandala and Red Energy Mandala by Peony and Parakeet

I made my mandalas as greeting cards. I think they would make great gifts!

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