Easy Mixed Media Project: Altered Photo

Dear Creative Friend,

Years ago (more than 20 now…wow) I worked at a custom framing shop. A piece of art came in to be framed that I was so intrigued by. It was a piece by James Rizzi. If I remember correctly it was being framed for an office at Toyota but I can’t remember the name of the piece. What I do remember is loving the way he raised elements in it to give a layered almost 3D effect. The subject of the piece that came in that day was city buildings- tons of them as I remember. He used foam pieces to raise different buildings to different distances from the paper. 

Young Shelby had no idea that she would tuck that day away as inspiration for her own creative projects but here we are. So today I’m going to use James Rizzi’s technique of adding some depth and layering to my own mixed media altered photo piece.

I begin with the base layer and focal point. The star of the piece is a photo of my niece when she was a bit younger taken by my husband. He captured her unforced sweetness and beauty while she was drawing.

The first thing I did was pull up the photo on my computer and remove the background. Then I sent it to have it printed up on matte paper. My printer wasn’t doing a good job keeping the coloring right. 

Next, I grabbed a few blocks I carved a while back, some block printing ink, a brayer, heavy white paper, and the piece of glass I use for print making. 

It was key to keep in mind my end goal when choosing the blocks to use. I had to make sure there would be a section or two that had a large enough surface area to use when it came to raising them off the page.

For this project I needed the paper to be heavier so that they would have enough structure when raised off the paper. To do that I used heavyweight cardstock and printed the blocks with black fabric ink. If you want to see what I use to carve and print my blocks you can find that on the Resources, Tools, & Supplies page. 

I didn’t pay attention to how many prints I made. I just made a bunch and then let them dry for a few days to make sure they were ready to work with. 

Once everything is cut out it’s time to assemble. 

I started by pasting down a few pieces and then went from there. I had a plan to have the flowers and foliage somewhat pointing toward her face. 

To add the dimension and height I used foam tape (like James Rizzi) cut into pieces small enough to be hidden under the broadest parts of the cut out prints. This got a little tricky on the smaller prints but worked perfectly since I thought about how this would work beforehand.

I varied the heights by adding an additional layer of foam tape to strategically random leaves or flowers. Ultimately, I tried to not have two or more pieces next to each other at the same height.

In the end, I chose to keep it at 3 levels and then mounted the whole piece on a foam board for another level of depth. 

I put the completed piece in a shadow frame I already had that was deep enough to house all the levels. The first thing I did was send my niece a picture of it. She approved and I’m so glad because I love it and this project has begun my altered photo series. If you enjoy this type of creating, be on the look out for my next piece in the series that will include niece number 2.