This is one of my first attempts at collage.  Having just read a book on the matter, I felt obliged to include nearly every technique available to me. 

The girl’s face is a acrylic transfer of a photo of my daughter.  One of the problems I found with the acrylic transfer is that when washing off the paper from the back of the photo, I also damaged the mat board I had painted on.  I suppose that’s why they use canvases or wood instead.

 The gold leafing is done on top of a butterfly drawn in hot glue.  Hot glue makes a good medium for attaching gold leafing to, excepting that it’s difficult to draw well in it.  It doesn’t have a very good luster, because I coated it with the acrylic sealer afterwards.  That’s my main issue with gold leafing.  It looks fantastic when it’s done, but once you seal it, it might as well be paint for all it shines.  I got some new spray acrylic sealer made just for that; I hope it will work better.

The faint gold butterflies in the upper right-hand corner are from a piece of paper I bought at an art store. I trimmed around it, and then put linseed oil on the paper to make it translucent.  It felt like it needed text, so I wrote on it in sharpie.  I’m never happy with the text I include.  It always seems that the words take on too much significance.