Brown paper ATC

I tried out a new-to-me mixed media technique for this ATC and am rather pleased with the results.

Take some brown (kraft) paper, an inch or so larger all around than your finished piece, and crumple it up. Crumple and uncrumple a few times till you like the texture.

Cut a piece of iron on interfacing to at least the size of your finished piece, and iron it on. The paper now feels more like fabric than paper, and won't tear where the interfacing is adhered.

Turn the paper over, raw an outline of your finished piece in pencil. Stick some pieces lace or other deeply textured textile on - I used gel medium to stick mine.

Take some perle embroidery thread - different weights would be nice, I only used one because an ATC is pretty small - and sew. I used stitches to ensure that the lace was anchored, and also as part of the design of my finished piece. The stitches are simple - blanket stitch, fly stitch, straight stitches and french knots.

Take some gesso and paint over everything you've done. I know, you just did all that embroidery - don't worry, it will all look good in the end!

Once the gesso is dry, paint over it with dark acrylic paint - I used Golden fluid acrylic in Paynes Grey (which I think is more of a blue!). Be sure to get the paint into all the texture - this will probably take 2-3 coats.

Once the paint is dry, rub all over with a gilding wax - I used Treasure Gold in sapphire. You could use rub'n'buff, or a Liberon product.

Finally, highlight all that texture with a contrasting colour of gilding wax - I used Treasure Copper - you need to have a very light touch for this part as you need to avoid getting the contrasting colour on the background (as far as you are able).

I'm really pleased with the end result, it has 'wow' factor - I will use this technique for other projects.

Olied paper experiments

Many years ago I created a 'faux vellum' by adding baby oil to copy paper. the results were not inspiring enough for me to try it a second time.

However, Maggie Grey has taken the technique futher in her new book by using a variety of papers and adding paint into the mix. The results can be very good, and create a surface that is suitable for papercrafting or stitch.

Annie came to stay last week and we had a little play. We took a selection of papers - a printed brown paper bag, a sheet of copy paper, a vintage map, some old sheet music, and some printed scrapbook papers.


We also used baby oil (but you can use almond, sunflower, lavender or whatever oil you like) and some cheap acrylics. I later tried more expensive acrylics and like the results of that the most!


At a very basic level, you can add oil to a plain sheet of copy paper,then leave in a cool place or half an hour to dry out before painting thinly with acrylic paint (or paint first, oil second) then crumple it up a few times. This looks fine.

We then experimented by stamping the copy paper first:

then painting:


which created a nice paper after crumpling - I don;t seem to have taken a pic of that on its own but it is shown in the last pic of this post.

Next I tried simply adding oil to printed papers - you can see the backs here to show the difference between oiled and unoiled:


and this made a nice surface for stitch, again see final pic in this post.

But this is my favourite - copy paper, painted with Jo Sonya metallic paint:


overpainted with cheap acrylic, paint lifted with a Cory Celaya stamp:



then oiled and crumpled, it looks and feels wondeful:

Here's a pic of all the papers we experimented on, from left to right - painted printed paper bag, copy paper, maps, sheet music, printed papers.


The map and sheet music were the least successful - the papers were too heavy, and probably too old, as they cracked and holes appeared during the crumpling stage. The printed papers were quite heavy but worked reasonably well, but the thinner papers worked the best.