Making textured paper backgrounds... part 2

So, if you've followed the first part of the tutorial you should have ended up with one or more curly and not-very-exciting bits of papery stuff like this...

Now we need to colour them.  The colour needs to be transparent, so a dye based colour or watercolour or even very dilute artists acrylic should work.  I use Brusho which is a fun little pot of dye based powder colour which you can get all sorts of interesting effects with.  To get the shade of blue I like, I use the black (yes, black!) Brusho, mixing a sprinkle of powder with lots of water to make a very dilute colour.  I can't tell you how much of each because I don't measure it, I literally do just sprinkle.  But for this, the more watery the colour the better, you can always add another darker coat later. The idea is that the colour from the base paper should show through just enough to make it interesting.

 

These have had a wash of the dilute colour applied.  You can still see the underneath coloured paper a bit too much but don't be tempted to add more colour, they will tone down as they dry.  If you still don't like the effect once they are dry, by all means add more colour then.  And of course, you don't have to use blue, you can use whatever colour you like!

 

And here they are nearly dry - you can see that the underneath colour has toned down a lot and the wrinkles in the tissue paper soak up the top colour to make darker streaks.

When they are completely dry they will probably curl up again. At this point I just flatten them with a cool iron.

Take a look at your work.  Do you like the way the base paper shows through?  One of my pieces (bottom left) had a very definite line down it which I didn't like, so I sponged some white acrylic paint over it and voila, no more line!

If you are making a bigger piece I would definitely recommend sponging some areas with acrylic paint in your choice of colour to add interest.

Once that has dried we get to the really fun bit - adding all the little bits of texture on top.  It helps if you have amassed a collection of interesting bits and pieces like I have, but really, anything will do.  Silk fibres work nicely, but so do threads pulled from the edge of fraying fabric.  I love plasterer's scrim but I have also used shredded pieces of the netting bags that you get fruit in.

Here's a selection of what I use - there are some silk fibres in there and the sparkly stuff is Angelina but a lot of them are just scraps - whenever I cut the edge off something and it's the right colour scheme for my cards it goes into the box.  And I save the little tangle mess of thread ends that accumulate when I'm doing a sewing project... sad, I know...  I have heard that lint from a tumble drier is interesting but I don't have one.  Probably just as well!

So what I do is look at the background in front of me, look at the box of scraps, pull out something that looks like it might work and stick it on.  I like to use acrylic matte medium to stick the bits because it doesn't leave a shine and seems to stick pretty much anything.  You could use PVA, that does tend to make the paper a little shiny, it depends on the effect you are after.

Nearly finished...

Once I've stuck something on I decide whether that's enough, or I might stick another piece of something on.  Or I might spray or spatter it with some ink - pearlescent is nice.  And because I am working with a seashore theme, on most of my pieces I add a little puff paint because I think it looks like flecks of foam.  Puff paint is weird stuff that expands and puffs up when you heat it with a heat gun, but he warned, less is more!  It's very easy to obliterate the whole thing with little white blobs!

And here are the finished pieces, complete with puff paint on some and each with their own piece of sea glass.

I have shown you how I make the toppers for my cards but I originally developed this technique for a series of much larger pieces (sorry the photo is a bit dark - do click to see it bigger).

Sea Strand I

If you are working on a larger scale than the cards and want to include a lot of stitching on the piece I recommend you back it with an iron-on interfacing for extra strength. It's best to do this before you add puff paint if you are using that, otherwise it can get a bit flattened.

And there you are! If you have any questions, do leave them in the comments below and I will try and answer them. And if you do try it out, I'd love to see what you make!

Making textured paper backgrounds... part 1

As promised, I'm going to take you through how I make the textured paper backgrounds for my seashore art pieces. It's not difficult, and I find the best thing is not to try and plan it too much, but just go with the flow - which suits me just fine!

You will need :

• an old plastic carrier bag
• fine cotton fabric (e.g. muslin/cheesecloth)
• pages torn from a colour magazine
• white tissue paper
• glue - PVA or wallpaper paste
• a paintbrush

To start with you will need to cover your work area with a layer of plastic - I usually just open up a plastic carrier bag and use that. Make sure it doesn't have any holes in it!

Because I stitch into these backgrounds, the first layer I use is fabric, cut roughly to the finished size of the piece, to give it some strength. A fine cotton muslin (cheesecloth) works best - it takes the glue well and is fine enough so you don't really notice it.  Spread the fabric on the plastic and dampen it to keep it in place.  Spread a layer of glue on top.

The next layer is simply torn paper from a colour magazine (I like the weekend Telegraph magazines because the paper is a nice thickness - sadly that is not regarded as a good way to choose the household reading matter!). Choose pieces with interesting colours or patterns on them - the colours can be quite different from the final colour of the piece.  In fact, in some ways, the more contrasting the colours the better.  As these pieces are for my cards they are quite small so I'm only using one piece of paper, torn to size, for each.  If they were larger I would build up a patchwork of torn pieces.  Crumple up the paper to take the shine off it, then open it out and press it on top of the pasted fabric.

The final layer is tissue paper.  Tear a piece of tissue paper a little larger than the paper you want to cover.  Spread another layer of glue on top of the coloured paper and put the tissue paper on top.  Using a wet paintbrush, push the tissue paper around a bit to make wrinkles and to bring the edges in level with the coloured paper underneath.  Don't worry if bits stick out, you can either leave them or tear them off when it's dry.  Press it down to make sure you flatten all the wrinkles and the tissue paper is soaked through.

Again for a bigger piece you can use a patchwork of pieces of tissue, but don't layer it up too thick because you still want to be able to see the colour from the paper underneath.

And that's it for the first stage - now you just need to leave the whole lot to dry.  It will probably curl up but don't worry about it!  I know they don't look much at the moment, but don't worry, they will.  You will need to come back for the second part of the tutorial!

How to... post an image in the Folksy forums

There have been so many people asking how to do this over in the Folksy forums lately and many people, including myself, have tried to help out by posting the code in various forum threads.  The only problem with this is, that if you copy the code from a forum thread it simply does not work, even after you have edited it to suit your own requirements.  Why this is I don't know, but I thought I would try posting it here instead to avoid having to send the many explanatory messages and e-mails that I have been doing lately!

So, the code you need to post an image is

    <a href="link text"><img src="image location" width="250" /></a>

Copy this to a notepad file and save it for future reference.  Then when you want to use it, replace link text with the URL of the page you want to link to and image location with location of the image you want to display.  Leave all the quote marks where they are.

The width="250" part governs the size of the image.  Typically an image on folksy is around 500px wide, which can seem a bit like shouting in the forums, so I suggest you reduce the size a little.  You don't have to stick to 250, it just seemed like a good number to me!

To find the location of an image on folksy simply right click on the image and select 'Copy Image Location', then paste it into your code.

Don't forget that you can edit a post until you get it right - or delete it all together if it all goes horribly wrong. Which of course it won't!

I really hope that helps, I'm off to test it now!

Edit:  And it works a treat!

Making 'Paper' from Vegetables

As promised – but rather overdue, sorry! – an explanation of my paper-from-vegetables process. These instructions are for flat paper - and are not terribly precise since this is definitely an experimental, make-it-up-as-you-go-along type of process... Sometimes it works fine, sometimes you do exactly the same thing and it all goes horribly wrong… but then that's what compost heaps are for!

Equipment : You will need some pressing boards (old shelves work well ), lots and lots of newspaper, and some cloths – I used the cheapest of cheap J-cloths.

Next, choose your vegetables. I have been most successful with courgette, carrot (sliced or grated), onions and red cabbage (good but smelly!). Leeks and celery can work but are a bit temperamental. I tried a yellow pepper which didn’t work at all, although I think it might if I skinned it first… or sliced it into strips… Anything too watery probably won’t work and shiny skins like that on the pepper are a problem.  But there are lots of veggies I haven’t tried yet which will probably work really well – so experiment!

Step 1 : Slice your chosen vegetable whichever way you want. The slices do not need to be particularly thin or even – in fact, slices which are too thin will make your resulting paper terribly fragile. Boil the slices until they are just soft but not disintegrating – how long depends on the vegetable and the thickness of the slices – 3-5mins is about right for most things. Drain.

Step 2 : Lay a cloth on top of a pad of newspaper, on top of a board. Arrange your drained vegetable slices on the cloth, overlapping the slices by about 5mm. You can see from the photograph that the courgette slices were really quite thick.  I was making lots of little separate pieces here so I haven't overlapped them much.

Lay another cloth on top and another pad of newspaper on top of that. If you have more vegetable slices you can lay another cloth on top and repeat, topping off with a last layer of newspaper and another pressing board. Weight it all down with a stack of books or whatever else you have to hand.

Step 3 : The vegetables are very wet at this stage, so after an hour or so you will need to replace all the newspaper with dry newspaper. This is important because if you don’t get rid of the moisture your veg will go mouldy before it dries. You can now leave your vegetables pressing for a few hours or overnight.

Step 4 : Your vegetables should be paper thin by now, sticking together and beginning to dry out. Renew the cloths by carefully peeling the top cloth off and replacing with a clean one. Flip the cloth-veg-cloth sandwich over and carefully peel off and replace the other cloth. If you don’t replace the cloths at this stage you may find your veg paper gets irretrievably stuck to them. Restack with fresh newspaper between the pressing boards.

Repeat step 4 a couple of times a day until your vegetable paper is dry. This can take up to 3 or 4 days depending on the moisture content and thickness of the vegetables, how heavy the weights are, and so on.

And then you’re done! The vegetable paper can be left as it is, or coated with a sealant such as shellac or acrylic wax. I found the acrylic wax made the otherwise quite brittle paper really flexible, but also very shiny, which I didn’t like so much. Shellac is less shiny and worked really well on the red cabbage but would discolour a paler vegetable.  I have no idea how long the paper will last or how long it will keep its colour - I will keep you updated.

So, have fun experimenting, and if you make some vegetable paper, send me a picture, I'd love to see!

Recycled Paper Flowers

As I was wandering the web I came across this amazing video of a technique called ‘origami crumpling’ developed by Vincent Floderer. Of course, being me I had to try it out; here is my first attempt using tissue paper – I dipped the base into Brusho and let it bleed up the paper to get the colour.

But then I wondered what would happen if I used just any old paper, and started with a page torn from a magazine. The result was so much like a flower that I kept going until I had a bunch of them – aren’t they great?

To make these flowers I used a simplified version of the origami crumpling technique. Start with a page torn from a magazine and tear a strip off it to get a square – you don’t need to be too precise. It is a good idea to choose a page with a bright colour on one side only to start with, so you know which way up you are – this will be the inside of the flower.

Step 1
With the brightly coloured side of the paper on the outside, fold the square in half and then in half again to get a quarter size square.

Step 2
Now fold your quarter size square in half crosswise, open it out, fold it in half the other way and open it out again. Turn it over and repeat the process, folding diagonally this time.

With a bit of pinching of the folds you should have a star shape like this.

Step 3
Hold your star shape by the tip and squeeze the paper together so you end up with something like this.

Step 4
Open out your crumpled star and unfold one of the original folds. You will have one point pointing up, and one pointing down. ‘Pop’ the downward point up so you have something like this.

Put your 2 points together and squeeze, just like you did in step 3. You can roll the paper gently between your hands to help with the crumpling.

Step 5
Open your paper right out. You will have 2 points pointing up and 2 pointing down. With the bright side of the paper facing up, ‘pop’ the upward points down so you have this.

Turn it over and pinch all 4 points together (like making a fortune teller/cootie catcher – remember those?) and repeat the crumpling/rolling one last time. Gently open out your flower.

I have pushed some thin 18” canes into the centre of my flowers to make stems; I think those green plant support canes would do pretty well too. The stems stay put quite well but you could add a bit of glue or double sided tape if you wanted to.

And there you are – a bunch of flowers for next to nothing! When you get bored of the colour, or they get dusty or faded, just recycle the paper and make some new ones! I think they are a great idea for low cost eco-friendly party decorations. And of course if you wanted to go all sophisticated you could use proper origami paper, or wrapping paper – the possibilities are endless… recycled yellow pages might look good… or pages from the Financial Times…  This ball is made from 6 of the 'flowers' glued together with string threaded through the centre.

If you enjoyed the video, do take a look at this one where Vincent Floderer makes the most amazingly realistic mushroom out of tissue paper!