How do I make Assemblage Art?

You need to start by collecting stuff! All kinds of stuff - bottles, cups, cutlery, electronics, keyboards - anything and everything can be used! Bigger items can also be broken down into smaller parts, such as pump bottles and white out strip machines. Consider EVERYTHING as having potential. 

Consider the shape of the item, its size, composition. Is it solid or hollow? Can it be painted, glued, drilled, screwed? Is it plastic, wood, rubber or something else??

How are these items going to be connected together? What additional pieces do I need to completed my project? Do I have the right tools to be able to make this happen at all?? What do I need to purchase - screws, specialty glue, wire, twine, the list goes on.

All these questions become relevant during the construction phase.

As the project moves forward, these factors can make or break your piece. Even the construction method may need to be modified to help make your project come together - literally. Does it need to move? Is it fixed? Does the item require reinforcing to help it stay upright?

Take the below nutcrackers. The bodies started as coffee containers and a juice bottle. The one in the centre is a shaped coffee container, primed and painted, with some felt accents, ribbons and button details. The legs are dowel that has been screwed into the container from the inside and from the base, which is an MDF coaster. His arms are also dowel, attached through the body with a bamboo skewer. The head is a plastic cup,  primed and painted. The crown centre is a styrofoam shape and the outer part is cut from craft foam. Hair is scraps of fur.

To the left and first right of centre - these are made from a cylindrical coffee cans, upside down (lid on the bottom). The same parts for the legs and arms as the centre guy. Hats are aerosol spray lids and cardboard pieces cut to size.

Far right is a square juice bottle, with a polystyrene ball for the head. Upside down plastic shot glass for the hat with a bottle cap in the top. Thinner dowel arms and legs give a more delicate look. Feet are biscuit joiners that are shaped like a pointy elipse or squashed circle. More close-up detail below:

Hands are wooden plugs from the hardware store.

Ribbon, sequins, cardboard, googly eyes, embroidery thread, craft foam - all stashed items used as finishing touches.

Below is my version of an Australia Day Nutcracker, complete with beer and Aussie flag. This one was great fun to make! I hunted everywhere for a beer the right scale and found it in a keyring from a discount shop. His flag is a novelty toothpick and his tshirt logo was from a temporary tattoo:

Many items that I use on a regular basis are listed below:

• bottles, bottle tops, lids
• plastic cups, yoghurt containers, sample cups
• coffee containers
• wood pieces - biscuit joiners, plugs, balls, beads, dowel, bamboo skewers
• container lids
• coasters (for bases)
• ribbon, fur, felt, fabric, sequins, braid
• paint, primer
• glue, screws

Essentially, anything can be used - it just depends on the look you are going for.

Contrast the above in both size and materials. Left started as a moisturiser bottle, while the right was a body wash bottle. The scale difference meant a variety of different materials were required. The soldier on the left has been primed and painted. Lots of shiny bits and a feather to finish off his hat.

The chef on the right started with the cap from a can of whipped cream - the rest was chosen to fit the theme and scale. Spoons for hands, razor blade handles for arms, bottle caps for top of sleeve. Gingham fabric glued to dowel for the legs that look like chef pants.

This one was a prize winner in 2021 in the Christmas decoration category. This has since SOLD.

Other options have involved Ferrero Rocher containers, paint and assorted embellishments added. This one painted to look like leather, finished in a Steampunk style.

This one was a napkin with assorted instruments and some printed images, layered decopage style. Feet are toothpaste lids and beads. 

The hardest part of working with found objects is finding the right "thing" to do the job, which is why a large amount of stash is required, but the joy when finding just the right thing is amazing!

What is Assemblage Art?

According to Wikipedia:

Assemblage is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium. It is part of the visual arts and it typically uses found objects, but is not limited to these materials.

or the Tate Gallery:

Assemblage is art that is made by assembling disparate elements – often everyday objects – scavenged by the artist or bought specially

For me, Assemblage Art involves taking everyday household objects and combining them so you no longer immediately recognise what the item that it once was - until you look a little closer. 

I will often paint my objects, then glue and screw them all together to make a new item. Most of my materials are household items which are mostly plastic, but I do also add new elements from the hardware, fabric shop or $2 shop to complete the item.

I usually don't have any plans to start with - they just kind of evolve. I mostly start with an interesting bottle or container and it will dictate what happens with it. 

They can take weeks or months to complete, as the process moves and changes with each step, and no two are ever the same.

My favourite item to make is a Nutcracker style Christmas ornament, but it could be a box or sculptural item. It all depends on the starting object.  

So, how do I make my items? Loads of trial and error!

Lets use the example below to explore my process in creating some Assemblage Art. This item won me first prize at out local Agricultural Show:

The inspiration for this was a Ferrero Rocher gift box container:

My original plan was to make this into a Christmas tree, with twinkling lights and tinsel. In fact, I did attempt to paint it to look like a tree using various green paint colours and it looked OK, but I wasn't feelin' it. So I painted over it again with my base coat and stared at it for another couple of days/weeks on my crafting table. What else does this look like? Then I thought CIRCUS TENT!! Bright colours, animals, performers, trapeze artists - now this was promising! But this container is quite small - its less than 30cm across the base - so anything that was added would need to be tiny and I don't really have tiny animals or people in my stash.... Hmmmm....

Stared at it again for a couple of days/weeks, then it hit me - A CAROUSEL!! That would work. I had some stripy fast food straws that I could use for the poles, My Little Ponies for the horses - yep, I think this is the winner.

I gathered up all the materials that I had on hand to see what might work for scale and just played around with it.

The original plan was to have a central tube, like in the above image and 4 ponies around it at varying heights, using the stripy straws as the poles. I put out the call to my Doll Collecting friends and was given a box of MLP's of varying sizes to use to check my scale. The little ones would work great, so I selected an assortment of ponies that were all facing in the same direction in some cute colours and used these as my starting point.

With the ponies selected, I decided to paint the top in colours that would compliment the pastel colours. Alternating colours around the top so each colour was only used twice meant that you would see different colours all the time at the top, with no duplication. 

Now, how do I attach the ponies to the top and bottom? It would need an insert of some kind to attach the "poles" to. What was round and firm that already existed that was also cheap? Cake bases!! They are already round and already shiny!! So, I took my lid to my favourite bits and bobs shop and found some that fitted perfectly into both the lid and the base. They are pressed cardboard (they also come in wood) so they would be easy to work with but solid enough to hold their shape. And they were less than $1 each:

Then, the question of how to actually mount the ponies. My thought was to use thick bamboo skewers through base, slide on a cut piece of straw, then through the pony, then more straw, then through the top. The central post would help to support the pieces (although once assembled, it was stable enough to not need the central pillar).

But how do I secure the ponies? I marked the centre of the circles and decided where the ponies would be located in relation to the central support. I grabbed the thickest bamboo skewers I had and drilled the holed to be tight fitting. This was replicated on both the top and bottom circles. In the base, I used a hardware piece to hold the skewer in place between the cake base and the plastic base, so it wouldn't slip. I could have also used thin dowel, but had none on hand. Turned out the skewer worked perfectly fine, so no need to change it. 

One thing I didn't take into account was how to drill through the ponies. Sounds easy, right? Not so much.... The location of the vertical hole meant that as the drill progressed through the body, the tail that was inserted into the body piece would get caught in the drill bit, so it took a lot of time and effort to actually get all the way through. But I got there eventually.....

Now, the more I looked at this, the more I thought it would be interesting to be able to actually make this rotate, just like a real carousel. Oh, wouldn't that be FAB!! But how?? The cake base could sit above the base a little bit and I could use marbles to make a lazy susan (the round table that they often have in Chinese restaurants that you can turn to move the food around). That's when I remembered I actually had TWO of these boxes, so why not use the second base piece to slot together, put the marbles between and it should spin around! YEEEESSSSS!!!!!!

I love it when an idea actually WORKS!!!!!

Of course, the bases slotted into each other perfectly. The only issue was that was how to hold the pieces together while turning? They had a tendency to slide off to one side, so it would need some kind of edge to stop this from happening. Again, I stared at it for days/weeks, looked at images online and saw one that had a fence around it. Hmmmmm.... Maybe a barrier of some kind?

So this is what I decided to do. I had some already-coloured craft sticks and some beads in my stash - could I make a velvet rope type of arrangement around the base to hold it in?

PERFECT!!

I still needed some feet that were chunky enough to lift the whole piece off the table but still look like its part of the whole. I found some deodorant lids which were perfect.

And what about the brim of the top? This was going to be a challenge. The easiest way will be using cardstock. I tried a couple of designs - upward and downward scallops - and managed to design and cut a suitable style on my Scan n Cut. Two pieces, with each scalloped piece matching a ridge in the lid.

So, now all the elements are ready - lets put it all together!

Once assembled, it was clear that it needed some more embellishments. The joins between the colours on the top also needed to be covered - a thin silver ribbon took care of that. The hearts were also cut on the Scan n Cut from craft foam, with additional sticker hearts from the scrapbooking store. Stretched the hearts to hold the "poles" in place for a little more security. The glue I used on these took a long time to cure and it needed some extra coverage to make sure they stayed in place. Some silver twine took the place of the velvet rope, with some careful threading to get through the beads, and I'm calling this one DONE!!

I had entered this into our local Agricultural Show and managed to snag myself a First prize in the Upcycled/Recycled category!

So there you have it! What was once useless bits of plastic is now a pretty Carousel!