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Valentine's Day is next week, but there's no need to run down to Clinton's just yet. Instead of buying a card, why not show someone how much you love them by making your own collage? With Valentine's Day fast approaching, Victoria Scott, an artist from DegreeArt, shows you how to create your own purrfect card or gift. Get out your scissors, paper and pencils and turn your insignificant doodle into a piece of art for your loved one to gasp over. Victoria has made hers in the shape of 'love cats', but if you're not a feline fan you could choose something meaningful to your relationship, using the same method to give it extra artistry. What you need:For the picture:
Coloured paper or card
Pencil
Pair of scissors
Craft knife
Glue
Fineliner pen
Blu-Tack
Ribbons or beads to decorate
Tracing paper
Sellotape sticky fixers For the mount:
Metal ruler
Thick white textured card
30cm x 30cm frame What to do:1. Draw out your design in pencil. It's often best to start with an easy design made up of fairly simple shapes, as you will be cutting it out of a sheet of paper and it's easy to chop bits off with a very fiddly picture. 2. Place a sheet of tracing paper over your illustration and draw over the lines of your design in pencil. You will need to press quite hard. Turn over your sheet of tracing paper and draw over the lines onto one of your pieces of coloured paper (you will be drawing on the back so the final image won't have any pencil marks on). It's a good idea to have a think about what colours you want in your design before you start this. 3. Very carefully cut out the traced shapes from the paper using either a craft knife or scissors. 4. Turn over your cut-out shapes, so that the pencil marks are on the back, and start to arrange them into your picture. A good tip is to Blu-Tack your shapes down to get them in the right place before you get out the glue. When you are happy with your picture start to glue all the bits into place 5. Add your final touches, using fineliner pens, ribbons or beads. On the cat design, the cats' faces, arms and legs are drawn on with a fineliner pen, while their bows are made using little bits of blue and pink ribbon. 6. To give your design a 3D effect, take the piece of white card and cut a 1-2cm wide strip. It doesn't need to be very long (under 10cm should do), but it needs to be long enough so you can concertina it a few times. Stick one end to the back of the pink heart so this will pop out the front of your picture. 7. To make your cats stand out too, attach Sellotape sticky fixers to their backs. Attach all your pieces to the red card. 8. To create your mount, take a piece of thick, textured white card. You need to work out how much border you would like your piece to have. It's best to keep the border the same all the way round the picture. Using a ruler mark the hole you would like to cut out. Carefully cut out the hole using a craft knife and a metal ruler. 9. Tape your finished picture into the back of your mount. When choosing a frame it is easier to use a frame with a gap between the glass and the area where the picture rests (so that you can still appreciate the 3D effect), or alternatively take out the glass. • Victoria Scott is an illustrator who often creates her designs as paper collages. To see more of her designs, go to degreeart.com, where this design is available as a limited-edition print.
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