Organising my Collage Materials

Having created my collage materials their organisation is the next challenge. Sometimes I have over a thousand pieces of paper, not including the scraps, and being able to lay my hands on what I need at any one time takes a lot of thought. In the house my dining room table is 4' x 8' which is just about large enough to lay them out on in piles of separate colours, and by then re-grouping the piles I can create enough space to work.

Piles of red, yellow and green papers held together with extra-large paper clips.

Blue collage materials

Fortunately if all I am doing is tearing and gluing, I can work in the house, but to combine paint, I need to be in the studio, which has nothing like as much available work surface.

For that I load my papers, sorted into different colours, into strong carrier bags.

Large, tough carrier bags full of collage papers can be carried to the studio and easily accessed.

The offcuts/ scraps are too valuable to waste, so these are paper-clipped together and stored in cellophane bags. I buy the huge paper-clips online.

Piles of offcut scraps, paper-clipped together will be stored in cellophane bags.

I am not naturally the tidiest of people and it takes a lot of self-discipline to keep on top of all of this. WIthin no time at all my collection can degenerate into unusable chaos if I don't constantly sort and re-sort, but seeing everything ship-shape gives me a lot of pleasure.

All sorted and ready for the studio!

Back in the studio I will raid the bags I need at any one time and extract anything that might be useful.

Dyeing papers or making collage plates and then inking them up to go through the press are activities I will happily spend weeks at a time on, but then once I have moved on to collaging, the process is so totally different and requires so much reorganisation of my work-space in the studio, that it feels quite daunting to return to printing and dyeing papers.

You might think that I had enough collage material to last a life-time but when I have recently been creating materials these bags almost burst at the seems. Sadly I am quickly running out of my favourite colours, especially the neutrals and the darker tones, so very soon I shall need to return to creating more. I know that I will enjoy it when I get there, but I just so want to finish the latest collage.....