New Year's Resolution #1 Painted, Scanned & Printed!

I haven't made many New Year's resolutions, but one thing I did promise myself was that this year I was going to make my own cover for my calendar. The calendar that I use has a clear sleeve for a cover, which means that you can slip any paper into it to make your own cover. Clever! I had the same calendar last year, but even though I had a whole year to do it, I didn't manage to change the image that came with the calender even once. Pretty pathetic. So I promised myself that this year will be different.

(The text says "Make your own cover")

Said and done. I worked through a Dina Wakely workshop today, and when the page was finished I realised that it would be the perfect cover for January! The workshop was all about what you can do when you've worked so many layers on a page that you reach the 'Now what?!?' stage. You know, when you realise that you loved your work four layers ago, but now you feel slightly sick when you look at it. The answer is that you cover up most of it, and by the magic of acrylic paint your page is saved and you have some neat artwork to enjoy.

This is the stage when I loved my page. So I took a photograph of it, as a memento, because I knew that Dina was going to make me push the page to the extreme.

I particularly love this part. Now, say good-bye to it.

At this point I wasn't very happy about the page any longer. But I kept the faith.

And here is the final page, after the big cover-up. Pretty amazing what a bit of paint can do. I scanned the artwork and printed the image with my laser printer, and voilà, my very own cover. And the first New Year's resolution has already been fulfilled!

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you'll have a wonderful and creative 2015!

Spring Feelings

I have spring feelings today! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, waves are crashing (no ice!!), and I have started working on a new spring-themed art quilt. I haven't worked on an art quilt since I finished my poppy quilt almost a year ago (link). Madness! So I'm pretty euphoric at the moment.

I've been planning this quilt in my head for a couple of months, and today I sat down with my acrylics and some watercolour paper to make a proper study before I start working with fabric and stitch. Yup, it's an important one, so I'm making lots of preparations this time. I'm afraid I'll have to keep the quilt under my hat for a while, as I have plans for it, but I can't help myself: I have to give you a sneak peek of what I've been up to. As I said, I'm euphoric and I might burst unless I share a couple of images.

Acrylics on watercolour paper, coloured pencils, monoprinting

Baby wipes used for cleaning brushes, paint knife and palette.

They make me happy.

Thanks for visiting my blog! 

Paste Paper

I've been experimenting with fabric marbling again, trying to figure out what you can use as the base (or 'size') instead of carrageenan, which isn't easy to find where I live. I've tried wallpaper paste and a paste made from water and potato flour, and so far I've had mixed results. I will return to these experiments soon on this blog, but today I'll write about something else, which you could say is a by-product from my recent experiments.

Looking at the wallpaper paste that I'd mixed for my marbling trials, I was reminded of a workshop with Diana Trout (Playful Paper Backgrounds) that I watched a while back. She was making something she called 'paste paper', which I thought looked fun. Basically, it is mixing something like wallpaper paste with acrylic paint, applying the mixture to paper, and making patterns in the thick paste. After the paint paste has dried you can use the patterned paper for different things, such as collage, card making, scrapbooking, and so on. So having an abundance of ready-mixed wallpaper paste I decided to give it a try.

I got out a collection of different kinds of papers to see how each of them would react to the treatment. The heaviest paper was a 180 g/m2 drawing paper, and the rest were a cheap and thin drawing paper, Letraset Comic Marker paper, normal copy paper, brown wrapping paper and pattern tissue paper. I had my doubts about the last one, but threw it in anyway, just to see what would happen.

I soaked all the papers apart from the tissue paper in water a few seconds prior to applying the paint, to avoid buckling, but wiped off excess water before applying the paint paste. I mixed acrylic paint into the wallpaper paste and used a sponge brush to apply the paste. I then used different texturizing tools, including my favourites - the silicone paint shapers - to make patterns.

Here are some of the papers:

Cheap drawing paper

Copy paper

Brown wrapping paper

Pattern tissue paper

Pattern tissue paper

I really enjoyed making these papers, as it was one of those Zen 'back to kindergarten' activities where you are allowed to play with goopy things and make a mess.

I was quite surprised by the fact that all the papers worked well for this technique - even the tissue paper! True, it was very fragile when wet with paint, but being careful, I managed to move it to a safe place without it ripping up. And it turned out that the tissue paper, along with the copy paper and brown wrapping paper became my favourites. They are cheap, worked just as well as the more expensive papers, and are thin enough to work well for collage. I still have unused wallpaper paste mooching about, so I might just make some more, in different colours. Try it!

Thanks for visiting!
- Annika

Fabric + Paper = Paper Fabric

I've been preparing a weekend course on how to make paper fabric and how to use it, and today I want to share some of the things I've been working on. Earlier examples of when I've played with paper fabric can be found here and here.

Here's a collection of "raw" paper fabric - that is paper fabric which hasn't been decorated with paint and stitch.

See the one in the middle, with a poppy shape? It's made with papers that I used to clean my stencils after printing poppies and fake script (for this project). Nothing goes to waste! :-)

I've made several kinds of purses, e.g.

and

The red paper fabric in the background later became a notebook cover:

By adding a bit of padding and a soft lining, you can make a cute eyeglass case:

And if you don't like sewing, cut it into strips and weave it into a little basket. The one in the background is made from birch bark, and the other one from paper fabric. Pretty neat, huh? They have a very similar feel to them.

There's just so much you can do with paper fabric! What a great way to recycle some of the paper that you have lying around the house.

Thanks for visiting my blog, and see you again soon!
- Annika