Japanese Inspired Tags

Oh my gosh, I'm so behind on my 100 tags. I only have 3 and a half months and still 50 tags to do! But I have been busy collaging this week. I've completed 4, Asian inspired tags.

Tag 51 uses a vintage Japanese illustration and document with hand made papers.

Tag 51

Tag 52 uses an image of a Geisha from a vintage postcard, a piece of a vintage document, and hand made papers.

Tag 52

Tag 53 uses vintage documents and a letterpress printed tea pot.

Tag 53

Tag 54 uses vintage documents, hand made papers and a letterpress printed fan.

Tag 54

Collage Tag Challenge

This week for my collage challenge, I did 3 tags all with an Asian theme.  All use a variety of hand made and vintage papers. I dyed the string a muted peach.

Tag 10

Tag 11

Tag 12

Retro Find

I found these cool retro sake bottles at an antique mall in the middle of Ohio. I have a few vintage Japanese kokeshi dolls so I thought they would fit right in. The bottles are made of glass with metal lids topped with hand painted wood heads. They date from the 1960s and originally held flavored Japanese sake. One of the bottles no longer has its tags but the other bottle held melon flavored sake. Made by House of Koshu, they originally came in a set of 7 different flavors and were given to first class passengers on Japan Airlines flights. That would have been a really cool souvenir!

House of Koshu sake bottles and vintage kokeshi dolls

I've got the bottles for sale in my Etsy shop here

Autumn Geisha

I went to the art store yesterday and spent lots of money on a ton of new handmade papers. I also purchased some transfer paper and did some experimenting. It definitely is a learning curve and I ruined a few images but in the end, my collage for this week came out pretty well. I used the transfer paper with a vintage Japanese photo and transferred it onto a Reader's Digest book cover. I also transferred the Japanese calligraphy but I put that on one of my new papers. The fan is a rubber stamp and I added a few more Japanese papers. Because I was experimenting, the nice pattern on the book cover got covered up but, win a few lose a few.

Collage week 39

The transfer paper I used is "Lesley Riley's TAP Transfer Paper". I like it because it doesn't leave a white background and you can use it with any inkjet printer. It tends to slide a bit while you're ironing so you have to be really careful.

Three Red Flowers

I've been so busy that me head is ready to explode. And it's about 100 degrees outside and that doesn't help matters. But I do have a collage for week 37. Three Red Flowers is done on canvas and combines acrylic paint, handmade Japanese papers, vintage music and pen and ink.

collage week 37

Nothing but Trouble

For some reason, the collage for this week gave me a lot of trouble. The first layer I put down was really ugly so I covered it up. I tried a rubber stamp and it smeared so I covered it up. Nothing was coming together. The result is a simple collage. Not a lot of layers or techniques. Just vintage wallpaper, 2 Japanese washi papers, a vintage Japanese match box label, a postage stamp and a Chinese character.

Collage week 21

Collage in Blue and Black

I have boxes of all kinds of scraps that I use for my collages. Sold papers, patterned papers, vintage wall paper, vintage ads, type, stamps...When I cut or tear a piece of paper, the remainder goes in the box for next time. My collage for week 14 was made from scraps that needed no altering - everything came out of my boxes as is in shape and size. I used some Japanese papers, Japanese newspaper and a Japanese postage stamp of a woman in traditional dress. The collage was done on a heavy weight textured paper (which doesn't show in the scan) and is approximately 5" x 5.5".

Collage Week 14