Van Gogh’s Starry Night: Sizzix Floral Collage

One of my favorite “Doctor Who” episodes is the one in which the Doctor goes back in time to meet Vincent Van Gogh, and then takes him to the D’Orsay Museum in present day so the artist can see how popular and famous he has become. (I cry a lot at the end.) Well, I was looking at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” the other day, and it suddenly hit me to do a collage piece of it using Sizzix floral dies, in particular my craft wife Eileen Hull‘s many floral dies. I thought that piecing together smaller shapes to create the landscape would mimic Van Gogh’s impressionistic style.

These are the Sizzix dies I used: Thinlits 661107 Rolled flower, Flower 3-D Fringed, 66111 Leaves Spring, 657721 Borders & Hydrangeas, 661110 Flower Romance, Leaves and Flower Petal Power.

For the background, I used the Flower 3-D Fringed die because the round shape provided great coverage, and the fringes added a nice texture to make it look dimensional. I also used one of Eileen Hull’s ColorBox Blends (color: Bay) to give each of the circles an impressionistic swipe of color.

I glued the backs with Aleene’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue.And then I glued the shapes to a 16″ x 20″ white mat board. I didn’t go all the way down to the bottom because the top was mostly sky, and the bottom was mountains and the town, which I would fill in later.

Then it was time to figure out which floral shapes worked best to recreate starry night. The coolest find was the swirl of the Thinlits Rolled Flower, which was perfect for the cloud swirls.

The Flower Romance die is probably one of my favorites — I use it for everything. And it makes great big stars. I also used the negative pieces of the die cuts to create the Van Gogh-like vibrating lines around the stars. Not a lot of paper went to waste for this project. 

One of my favorite discoveries was in the Spring Leaves die. The one twiggy leaf has multiple little leaves, so I cut them off, and they made great pointillism shapes.

I couldn’t believe how well this turned out. I hope Vincent is looking down from the stars, at peace, and happy with what I’ve done.