Mixed media artists need lace, or foil, or that mysterious bag of fabric scraps they’ve been hauling from apartment to apartment for a decade “just in case.”
Friend. This is the just in case.
Today we’re geeking out over found textiles and materials as physical collaborators you can layer in, glue down, print from, or build a whole surface around. Let’s dig through the scrap drawer and discover texture techniques for mixed media.
(And if your scrap drawer is looking tragically bare, our Collage Trunk is five-boxes-and-counting of vintage lace, foil, fabric scraps, and ephemera. Fill a whole bag for $2.99 and dig to your heart’s content!)
Two Ways to Use a Scrap: Mask It or Keep It
Before we get into materials, here’s the one distinction that unlocks all of this. A piece of lace (or netting, or burlap, or foil) can play two completely different roles, and knowing which one you’re after changes everything:
As a mask or barrier: you lay it down, work over it (spray, sponge, dab ink, rub a pastel, scribble a marker, spatter, whatever), then lift it away. The material itself leaves the building, but its shadow stays behind as a crisp negative-space pattern. Think of it as a stencil that happens to be made of grandma’s doily.
As a permanent element: you glue it into the piece and let it live there, bare, tinted, buried under a layer, or peeking cheekily through the top. Now the physical texture is the surface, bumps and threads and all.
Lace & Netting: The Elegant Shadow-Makers
Lace is the absolute crown jewel of the found-texture world, and the reason is deliciously simple: it’s mostly holes. That intricate open pattern is doing all the work for you. Lay a piece flat, then apply color over it however you like: spray, sponge, a dry brush, an ink dauber, the side of a soft pastel, even a scribbly pass with markers. Lift it away and ta-da: a delicate lacy imprint you’d go cross-eyed trying to draw by hand.
Nerdy tip: wet media wants to creep under the lace and blur the edges, while dry media (pastel, colored pencil, dry-brushed anything) stays crisp and behaves itself. Want sharp? Go dry, press the lace flat, tape the corners down. Want soft and dreamy? Get things wet and let it bleed. Neither is wrong, they’re just different flavors of magic.
And as a keeper? Glue lace down with a little matte medium and it becomes gorgeous raised texture all on its own, no color required. Rub a metallic wax or a pastel across it and only the high threads catch the pigment, so the pattern leaps out. Fruit netting, tulle, and cheesecloth pull the same trick with looser, coarser, more organic personalities. (Cheesecloth in particular is a scruffy little overachiever.)
Found Fabrics: Everyone Behaves Differently
This is where it gets genuinely nerdy, because every fabric has its own personality and that personality shapes what you get, whether or not any color is involved.
As texture you keep, the weave is the whole point. Glue down a coarse, chunky fabric and you get bold physical relief you can feel with a fingertip; a smooth, fine one lays almost flat and adds subtle body. Burlap brings a rugged grid, lace brings delicacy, velvet brings a light-drinking softness, denim brings that broken-in workwear grit. You’re basically casting each scrap for its vibe.
As texture you print or rub, the differences get even more fun. If you do bring in color, fabrics react wildly differently:
- Thirsty, absorbent fabrics (cotton, muslin, canvas) drink ink or fluid paint and hold it, giving soft, matte, slightly bleeding marks: perfect for weathered, stained, aged effects.
- Loose, textured weaves (burlap, linen, open-knit anything) catch color on their raised threads and leave the valleys pale, so a quick press reveals that grid beautifully. Rub a metallic wax or pastel across a glued-down piece and you get the same reveal, bone dry.
- Slick synthetics (satin, nylon, ribbon) shrug color off and let it slide and pool into unpredictable marbled edges. Less control, more delightful chaos.
Try this: press a scrap face-down into a shallow ink pad, or a skim of fluid acrylic, then stamp it onto your page. The weave transfers, but so does the soul of that specific cloth. A burlap print and a satin print from the same color look like they came from different planets. Start hoarding scraps and you’ve built yourself an endless, free, texture stamp library. (See? The hoarding was strategic all along.)
Foil: Drama, Shine & Delicious Trouble
Foil brings the one thing none of the fabrics can: shine. It’s the diva of the scrap drawer, and it’s got a few sneaky moves.
As a straight-up shiny element, metallic foil, candy wrappers, gum wrappers, and foil papers add reflective pop that catches light and yanks the eye right where you want it. Glue them down, tuck them under a torn edge, let a sliver wink out from between layers. No color needed, the metal is the drama.
As a texture-maker, crinkle a sheet of aluminum foil into a wad, gently flatten it back out, and glue it down. You’ve got a crackled, faceted, fractured-glacier surface that plays with light from every angle. Bone dry, endlessly satisfying, weirdly geological.
As a printing partner, foil is non-porous, so anything wet beads and pools on it in ways paper simply won’t allow. Roll or brush a little color onto crinkled foil, press your paper down like a monoprint, and peel up mottled, organic, one-of-a-kind patterns full of pooling and reticulation. It’s the closest thing to controlled chaos we know.
Nerdy tip: foil is a commitment-phobe and won’t stick to much on its own. Gel medium or a solid adhesive is your best friend here, and a whisper of matte or gloss medium over the top protects the shine and helps everything read as one happy, cohesive surface instead of a loose gum wrapper on the run.
Playing Well With Others
Here’s where it all comes home: found textures are made for layering. Whether your thing is paper-only collage, ink and stamps, dry pastel work, stitched fiber pieces, or the full paint-and-everything mixed-media circus, lace and fabric and foil give your surface depth you can actually feel, not just depth you fake with shading.
A few ways they earn their keep:
- Glue a lace or fabric scrap down early as an underlayer, then build your other bits on top so it ghosts up through the finished piece like a happy little secret.
- Use fabric as a “quiet” layer to break up busy areas, a strip of muted muslin gives the eye a place to sit and breathe between louder elements.
- Save foil for accents, never fields. A little shine is a jewel; a lot of shine is a snack wrapper. Restraint, friends.
- Bring it all together at the end with a pass of matte medium, so wildly different materials (glossy foil, thirsty cotton, printed paper) settle down and read as one unified surface instead of a squabbling committee.
The whole joy of mixed media is that nothing is off-limits. That price tag, that ticket stub, that scrap of a beloved shirt you couldn’t bear to toss, it’s all fair game, all texture, all story. Glue optional. Curiosity mandatory.
Come Raid the Collage Trunk With Us
Fresh out of scraps? This is exactly what our Collage Trunk was born for. It’s tucked in the back of the store (right below Reba, IYKYK), overflowing with vintage lace, foils, fabric scraps, fringe, stamps, and weird little estate-find treasures and you can fill a whole bag for $2.99. Every dig is different, and every piece already comes with a story baked in.
We’re also endlessly nerdy about the stuff that makes this all work, matte and gloss gels, adhesives, inks, sprays, metallic waxes, and the sealers that hold a wild mixed-media surface together. So dig through the Trunk, then bring your haul to the counter and we’ll help you figure out what sticks to what, which medium to reach for, and how to keep your beautiful textured chaos from peeling apart in six months. No material too weird. We’re already elbow-deep in ours.
No scrap drawer? No problem. Come dig through our Collage Trunk then let us help you match the right mediums and adhesives so your textured, layered, gloriously weird mixed-media work actually holds together. Bring your curiosity; we’ll bring the nerdy problem-solving. We love to see what you create too! Share with us on Instagram!
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