Guest Author - Vivienne Oestergaard
Altered art seems to have taken hold of the crafting world. It cuts across many genres of papercrafting, from scrapbooking, mixed media, photography, collage, fine art painting, even sewing! I think it’s the use of so many techniques that appeals to the crafter. A little of this, a little of that and out comes a gorgeous piece of art. This is also a good way to try out different techniques. Because you are doing it to a smaller surface or to a smaller scale project, it doesn’t have to be expensive and if it doesn’t come out quite right, you can toss it and start over.
Technology Student
Here is a site that has how to’s for many altered art techniques:
Love My Scrapbooking Ideas
If you are looking for instruction in fine arts type of crafting, look no further. This is university type online courses for different types of arts and crafting techniques. For this type of course, the prices are really inexpensive.
Craftedu
There are even 2 courses offered for free!
If you are looking for images, you can find many online for free such as Graphics Fairy and Vintage Moth:
Graphics Fairy
Vintage Moth
If you plan to purchase book type images, try Dover books. They have an amazing range of images that you can use for your altered art or collages. The limitation is that Dover allows you 10 images per book per artpiece if you plan to sell the piece.
Dover Books
If you want to use digital art for either your altered art collages or maybe for digital artwork, try these artists who do fun kits specific to the digital scrapbooking industry:
Tangie Baxter
Holliewood Studios
Sherrie JD
ViVa Artistry
Deviantscraps is a site for all things altered. You can purchase kits to digital scrap your photos or use them to print out and put into your collages/artwork.
Deviant Scrap
Check out their forum for fantastic ideas!
Check also at the DigiChick forums for great paper projects using digital type images (hybrid style papercrafting):
DigiChick
Hybrid papercrafting is new terminology for using a computer to aid you in your crafting projects. In the case of the DigiChicks, they specialize in hybrid with many paper projects that start out as a digital pattern or use digital art kits. Kelleigh Ratzlaff makes digital patterns for many types of boxes:
Kelleigh Ratzlaff
You can also check out The Cutting Files. These patterns are geared towards cutting machines that use software.
The Cutting Files
And for an alternative to rubber stamps, try digital stamps:
Arty Pants
You can use this in a similar way to rubber stamping. You can print the designs out on a printer and then color it or stamp it some more. Or, you can use software on your computer and do your coloring techniques and THEN print it out.
Hopefully, this has given you some information on resources out there on the web and inspire you further in your art!
