Balzer Designs

Collage Faces

On Saturday I taught my "Collage Faces" class to a great group of ladies.  We had lots of fun cutting and pasting funny faces!

Isn't it amazing how a group of people can walk into a room, receive the same instruction, and walk about with such different final projects?!  I love that.  Art making is such a personal expression of who you are and where you are at that moment!

Thanks for stopping by!

Collage Face with Vintage Papers

As you know, I normally do collage work with my own brightly colored hand painted papers.  But, I decided to see what would happen if I used only found vintage papers.  Here is the result:

And a hyperlapse video of the process:

 

 

 

 

 

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I love using my hand painted papers to make art, but you don’t have to! Here’s a more neutral collage face made up of vintage found papers. 🙌 . . . #vintage #vintagepaper #ephemera #collage #collageart #cutandpaste #whatjuliemade #balzervideo #contemporaryart #iheartpaper #bookpages #portrait #whatjulietaught #julielikeseyes #craft #papercrafting #abmcrafty

A post shared by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer (@balzerdesigns) on Mar 30, 2019 at 8:56am PDT

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Paper Flower Place Cards with ScanNCut

I recently made these gorgeous paper flower place cards with my ScanNCut:

The flower, the leaves, and the "twigs" are all built-in designs from the ScanNCut DX225.  I used one of the basic shapes in CanvasWorkspace to create the flag.  I even used the ScanNCut to write the names on the tags!

If you're interested in making a similar project, here are some resources:

Two Videos on Making Flowers with ScanNCut:

Two Videos on Drawing with ScanNCut:

Thanks for stopping by!

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P.S. I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut.  It is a machine that I love and use.  All projects and opinions are my own.

Product Registration: https://www.brother-usa.com/registermybrother/
Brother Customer Support: https://www.brother-usa.com/support/

Collage Faces: A One-Day Workshop

I hope you'll join me for a new in-person class I'm teaching on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at a private home in Hanover, MA.

Collage Faces is a super fun one-day workshop. To begin, you will learn all about the basic structure of the face. Then through a series of easy exercises you will learn how to render a face in cut paper collage. We will cover the subtleties of shading, eyes, and all the details that make your collage face really pop!

We'll discuss abstraction versus realism and I'll help you discover and embrace your own personal style of creating faces.

Supplies to Bring:

• Multiple surfaces to collage onto – canvas board, watercolor paper, wood, art journal, cardstock, etc. – whatever you prefer.
• Paper for collage – found papers, hand painted papers, etc. – bring more than you think you’ll need. Try to bring a full palette of colors.
• Scratch Paper (can just be several sheets of copy paper or notebook paper)
• Permanent Black Pen
• Permanent Black Marker
• Liquitex Matte Medium
• Credit Card or Hotel Room Key
• Paintbrushes in a variety of sizes
• Jar or container for water
• Scissors (small detail scissors recommended)
• Wax Paper or Freezer Paper
• Painter’s Tape
• Paper Plate or Palette Paper
• Optional: Apron, crayons or oil pastels, watercolor and/or acrylic paint, paper towel or rag, craft knife and cutting mat, charcoal, collage paper to share

The class is $135 and class size is strictly limited.  No refunds, but you can give your spot to a friend if something comes up and you can't attend class.

Hope to see you in class!

A Birthday Card with a Pocket

This year for my Mom's birthday, Steve managed to get tickets to see Hamilton: The Musical.  He asked me to make a card that he could slip the tickets into.  And so, I did.  (In the photos I used photo booth strips instead of the tickets.) 

I love how it turned out!  I think how you give the gift can matter as much as the gift itself.

I designed the card in Adobe Illustrator and then I used my ScanNCut to cut it out.  But, you certainly could cut it by hand.  Or alternately, you don't need the lacy bits. You could use a pretty piece of patterned paper and create a very similar card!  Here is a link to a very simple tutorial for making a card with a pocket.

Thanks for stopping by!