If you've ever stared at a pile of beautiful papers and ephemera and had no idea where to start — or spent an hour shuffling things around before giving up — this tutorial is for you. I put together a collage formula that takes the paralysis out of the process: five core layers, a simple approach to focal point placement, and a loose order to work through so you're not making decisions from scratch every time. The same formula runs through all the collage pieces I show in the video, and yet they all end up looking individual.
What we cover
I walk through my five-layer collage formula — craft paper, book pages, pretty paper, plain paper, and a focal point — and show how to build three collage pieces from scratch using that exact order. We also cover the rule-of-thirds approach to placing a focal point, inking edges for dimension, and the finishing touches (sentiments, washi tape, stamps, gold corners) that pull everything together. At the end, I show a flip-through of all the pieces I've made using this same formula.
What you'll learn
The five-layer collage formula — the core building blocks I use in every collage, in this order:
- A base (black paper, white paper, coffee-dyed paper, or a journal page)
- Craft paper or packaging paper — torn for uneven edges and a bit of texture
- Book pages — also torn, to keep that loose organic feel
- Pretty paper — a doily, handmade paper, wallpaper samples, anything with visual texture or pattern
- Plain paper — lined, plain, or coffee-dyed — as a quieter layer to anchor the focal point
How to choose and place a focal point — the single most important decision in the whole process, including:
- Using die cuts, fussy cuts from books or magazines, or ephemera sheets
- Placing the focal point at one of the four rule-of-thirds intersections rather than dead center or in a corner
- Thinking about how the eye travels — from focal point to sentiment to embellishment — so the piece tells a little story
How to ink edges across all your layers — including the doily, the plain paper, and the base itself. Inking directly over the plain paper pieces knocks back that stark whiteness and helps everything feel like it belongs together. A blending tool makes quick work of the doily, which is too fiddly to ink by hand.
How to finish a collage piece with layered details, including:
- Tearing and placing washi tape strips with rough edges so you're not left with hard lines
- Stamping into empty areas to fill the eye's natural resting points
- Adding sentiments that relate to what's happening in the focal point (a bird looking back gets see possibility everywhere; a butterfly piece gets don't forget to fly)
- Using a circle punch for small scattered shapes
- Rounding corners and running a gold pencil around the edges — it doesn't look like much on white paper but reads beautifully against a dark book cover
Why making these as individual pieces (rather than directly on a journal page) is worth it — they dry flat, they can go on covers, and framed they look genuinely lovely.
How to adapt the formula once it feels natural — once you're comfortable with five layers, you can start stacking more pretty paper: a doily and some handmade paper and a wallpaper scrap, rather than choosing just one. The formula is a starting point, not a ceiling.
Tips & gotchas
Before you glue anything down, take a photo of your layout. I know this sounds obvious, but when you start lifting pieces to apply glue you will immediately forget where things were — especially the placement of the focal point. I proved this on camera when I forgot my phone was my camera and had to wing it.
Ink all your edges before gluing — not just the top pieces, all of them, including the doily. A white doily sitting on a dark background with no inking looks like it landed from a different project. A few seconds with the blending tool and it settles right in.
If you genuinely cannot decide where to place something, turn it upside down. It sounds odd but it works — flipping the piece breaks the mental lock and you see the composition differently almost immediately.
Place the focal point away from dead center and away from the corners. I think of the page divided into thirds both ways, and aim for one of the four intersection points — that's where the eye naturally wants to land first. Once the focal point is placed, everything else (sentiment, stamps, washi tape) can be positioned to give the eye somewhere to travel to next.
Don't overthink once things are down. I noticed a shape in the handmade paper on one piece that I hadn't seen before, and the temptation was to unpick the whole thing. I just glued it and moved on. That's the right call.
PVA and tacky glue do warp the paper a little. It doesn't bother me in a collage — the texture is part of the point — but if you want a flatter finish, lay the finished piece under something heavy while it dries. It really does make a difference.
Your eye starts to know where things want to go, you reach for the layers in order without thinking, and the decisions that used to take twenty minutes start taking two. These pieces have ended up on journal covers, inside art journals, and a couple of them framed on a wall — once you have a reliable process, you'll find yourself making them just to have them.
