Making Fabric Paper

First things FIRST.  Lay down a plastic covering on the work service; laying out your muslin and items you want to use in the collage.
The muslin can be any shape; small, squarish…or round if you’d like!
Notice I left the frayed edge (on the left) of the muslin.
By the way, these are items I put in the art quilt “Katie Cutie”.

Next: you will lay down your (pre-planned) miscellaneous ephemera items on the ‘primed’ glue-muslin layer. It will dry fairly quickly, so you don’t want to take too much time deciding what to use.
Note: I know some artists like to use various gel mediums… as far as I know, either will work just fine… (but I’m not an expert – I’m just a hands-on, let’s try this type of girl!  I’ve only used tacky glue so far. 

“Give Thanks” paper quilt

If you find the top tissue layer isn’t sticking, gently add a bit more glue/water mixture to the top of the tissue  Than add your paint… watered down as you desire (add a bit of glue to it if you want and this has worked well for me)

AND.. if you ‘over-do’ it… you get some fabulous wrinkles or perhaps the tissue ‘wears’ away a bit!  No worries! (See ‘Dancing With Jack’) 

Here is the final dried, layered base… notice there is a transparent coating of acrylic paint, watered down significantly… but this is certainly a personal preference!  See an earlier piece I did, (below) in which the paint was mostly opaque… and I liked that too… but it does cover up more of the things you laid down… just a different style, really.
Now is the time to add further embellishments… fused flowers were added after the paint had dried.

Let it dry… it will curl.  
Once dry, iron it (into submission).
Stabilize it, bat it, back it.
Stitch it.