Stormy Night

I have this picture I took on one of my trips to Florida, that I have had up on the bulletin board in the laundry/craft room for months. It is kinda cool in a weird way, looking up through the branches of a leafless tree at the storm clouds rolling in. After months of looking at it and looking at it, I ended up painting this...

Not what I thought I was going to paint, but then again, since I didn't have a definite image in mind when I started it seems to have worked out.

playing in florida

Lynns' Garden Guarded by Billie


Photoshopped Fish

book cover...

Here is the front cover for my newest handmade book. The cover is made of heavy paper board (mountain dew box) covered with a sheet of the unsized handmade paper (recycled junk mail). The painting was done in stages with watercolors. The texture of the paper and the lack of sizing (starch) found in comercially made papers made for a very interesting effect, that I happen to like. I learned the hard way that my paper being on the light weight side is also very fragile when wet, but fairly easily mendend.

Here are a few shots of the cover as it was coming along. First up is the mountain dew box being taken apart and cut to size. Then next is what some of the sheet of paper I made made look like before being glued to the box pieces. Then what the covers looked like before painting began. The last one is of the tree before the sye was added.

making paper take two...the blender had an accident

I was getting all the stuff together to do a little more exploration of making paper by hand at home and there was a bit of a set back when the base of the blender flew out of my hand in an impressive arc from the counter to the floor. It made quite a diplay as the force of the impact set bit of white plastic flying in numorous directions. The cat wisely ran for cover under the bed. After a moment to marvel at the fact that the glass pitch was still in tack sitting on the counter, I realized that I just might beable to fix the blender with some duck tape. After all duck tape with it's light and dark sides is the force that holds the universe together, a little blender should be no problem. I had to settle for clear packing tape as the duck tape is currently missing in action. The great news is that dispite it unplanned trip to meet the floor the blender still works. Who knew that blenders could take such a beating and bounce back almost like rubbermaid. So after a bit of delay, the paper making is back on track.

Hamster

fabric tree

Here in pictures is the evolution of the fabric tree. By the way yes, it is alot of little tiny bits of fabric, glued by hand one piece at a time.

handmade paper part 1

So after going about collecting a few different views online about how to make paper at home in your kitchen. I decided give it a try after all basicly all of them came down to put paper bits and water in blender, mix well, pour out on a mold with screen material on one side, press out the water and let it dry. Sounded simple to me.

I was happy to tear up a pile of juck mail in to bits and dump it in to my handy blender with some warm tap water and push the on button. I watched bit of credit cards ads and car dealer promotions whirl around whipped, pureed and even liquefied into greyish pulp. (Next time I will have to try adding a dye of some sort.) Looking at my pulp I decided it needed to be more, not just boring normal square sheets of paper, in come the cookie cutters. I used stars, trees and a moon as the molds set out on a cheap ready made window screen from the "do-it-yourself" store. Once enough of the water had dripped out the bottom, I removed the molds and gently pressed more water from my shaped paper. I found the second screen (they came in a two pack) handy when trying get even more of the water out of my new paper. Who knew that junk mail once blended would hold more water than bounty. I finally did manage to get a fair amount of water out of my new paper and the stars, trees and moon should dry nicely in a day or so. I have to warn anyone wanting try this beware of the mess potential and time you think it will take, both will be double. But then again so is the fun part of the process :)

bye bye junk mail

hello grey pulp

2 stars, 2 trees and the moon

they lost a little of their shape in squeezing process.