THE GUARDIAN: LIFE AND STYLE - HOW TO MAKE A VALENTINE'S COLLAGE

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, Victoria Scott, and 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!

Take a look at the full instructions and article HERE or simple take a look below: 

WHAT YOU NEED: 

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

30 cm x 30 cm frame

WHAT TO DO: 

Draw out your design in pencil

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 witha  very fiddly picture.

Draw over the lines on to the one of the pieces of coloured paper.

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. 

Cut out the traced shapes from the paper. 

Very carefully cut out the traced shapes from the paper using either a craft knife or scissors. 

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. 

Add your final touches. 

Add yoru 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 littble bits of blue and pink ribbon.

Add 3D effects

To give your design a 3D effect, take the piece of the 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. 

To Make your cats stand out too, attach Sellotape sticky fixers to their backs. Attach all your pieces to the red card. 

To create the 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 way all around 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.

Tape your finished picture into the back of the 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 take a look below!

Do you love the idea of showing you love for your significant other through art? CLICK HERE to see all of our reccommended Valentine's Day artwork

See more work from Victoria Scott below: 

Love Cats

£55.00 GBP 

Hot Dogs

£100.00 GBP

London

£100.00

Tree Love

£100.00