Citrasolv

Citrasolv, an orange oil based cleaner, dissolves the ink in National Geographic magazines to great effect:

http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/search/label/Citrasolv

and there are at least 3 UK suppliers of the product:

http://www.greenhealthwatch.com/goodslifeworks/goodspollutionbusters/pblaun21ccit.htm

http://www.21stcenturyhealth.co.uk/productdetail.asp?category=&prodid=30

http://www.ecohip.org/product.php/659/citra-solv-concentrated-multi-purpose-cleaner-32oz

Why not find some old National Geographic magazines and have a play?

Paris tip in page

I have decided to join a monthly 'tip in' page swap,
hosted by Sweetpea on CC Swaps yahoo group,
to build up a chunky book with lots of different themes.
January's theme was Paris....

The background is the 'citrasolv & national geographic paper'
I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog,
with layered stamped and printed images on top.

The back of the page uses the same paper,
stamped with fleur des lys
layered with eiffel tower images.

Claudine Hellmuth's Art & Soul class part 3

This is a piece - A4 size - that I created in class, using a 'faux leather' background made by crumpling a magazine page, rubbing with Nevrdull, and then painting with a glaze of Golden fluid acrylics in one or two colours and adding a few touches of metallic pastels. The collaged elements were all altered by rubbing with Nevrdull.


This piece has a background of part of a National Geographic/Citrasolv page (glued onto canvas paper to give it some 'body', with an image cut from a magazine page glued on. It is not finished yet, I am waiting until I see a suitable Egyptian element to add to the page, in the space under the 'T'.


The final sample took only a few minutes to make - it is an area of a National Geographic page glued to canvas paper, with a 'Nevrdulled' flower and some text collaged onto the page. Quick, easy, and looks as if I spent some time on it!!!

Claudine Hellmuth's Art & Soul class part 2

The second technique demonstrated in Claudine's class involved concentrated Citrasolv & National Geographic magazines, along with some paper kitchen towel and cling film.

The diluted 'ready to use' Citrasolv doesn't work for this technique, and I doubt if many other magazines would, either.

National Geographic lays down a very thin layer of gold ink underneath its printed photographs, and the Citrasolv and gold ink work their magic together and produce beautiful background papers; many of them look like works by Klimt as the gold ink seems to come to the surface but with many ovals splodges of other colours, as shown here:

Text and image transfers to the opposite page,
too, as you can see below.

It only seems to work if you do lots of pages together. Everything smells wonderfully orangey while you are working and also the papers will smell of oranges for a LONG time afterwards... If you don't like the smell of oranges, this is not the technique for you!

So, grab your concentrated Citrasolv, and use kitchen paper towel to apply it to a NG page - a generous coating, but not enough to puddle. Turn the page and coat the other side. Coat the next page, and the next, and the next, until you have coated the whole magazine with Citrasolv. Insert crumpled cling film (saran wrap) in between some of the pages - especially on double page photo spreads. These pages will have an interesting texture, as in the sample below.