Monday, November 26, 2018

Test Test Test

While I'm still babying my shoulder and thus unwilling to give any actual sewing a try, I did test out something multimedia-ish that I've been meaning to try for awhile. I watch a lot of videos on Joggles.com that, granted, are tutorials featuring products she sells but which really give a lot of good general information about how to do a lot of multimedia techniques. And while the majority of the ideas are geared towards use on paper, a lot of them involve paint and could easily adapt to use on cloth. That's my justification for watching them. One thing she showed was how to remove design elements printed on tissue paper without using scissors. I recently realized that I had some tissue paper printed with dragonflies and maybe I could use it in my recycle bookbinding project. Step one is to take a wet paint brush to "draw" around the image, making a damp line - you should be able to see a bit of reflection around the lower dragonfly.


Now the tissue paper has been weakened and you can gently apply pressure to cause the damp line to tear. Ok, so far so good. I'm guessing that soft uneven edge is part of the reason that, when adhered to your project, the unprinted part of the tissue paper "melts into the background and virtually disappears." Yes, that is what it appears to do in the video, but that tissue paper is white. Mine is this tan, but since I'd be adhering it to my brown paper pages, I assumed the disappearing act would still take place.


But I have learned over time that many techniques that work so beautifully in videos and other instructions, don't always work the same when I attempt them. So time to test on a scrap of paper, along with trying out adhering with matte gel medium. Everyone uses this almost interchangeably with regular glues and pastes, and I could see that my preferred adhesives would be a pain if not downright impossible to use on tissue paper. So out came the medium and the brush and I tried both putting it just on the underside and as well as underneath and over the top. I didn't know what kind of visual change the medium might make on top but it literally looked and felt no different from the one just underneath, and the brushing on top helps to smooth out any wrinkles and give a nice even stick. However, as you can see in the picture, the unprinted portion of the tissue paper did not "virtually disappear."


So I will be going back to scissors and cutting these various sized dragonflies out leaving just a small margin of tissue paper. Here you can see an example of how they might fill some space on some of the pages - these are not adhered to the page yet.

Speaking of Joggles, look what came last week - a box full of goodies to play with. Joggles was having a closeout on Marabu paint products and I decided to get some more of their opaque textile paint. And try the textile paint in a spray. And while so much on their site was marked down, I checked my wish list and added a few more things like another stencil. And then because I had the paint and stencil coming and I'd watched so many videos using these on a gel plate, I added one of those to my shopping cart too. I bought enough to get half off shipping and two free Marabu crayons. Yeah, I have a bit of new supplies to play with.

6 comments:

The Inside Stori said...

Looks like you are using your healing time wisely....enjoy the fun!

Jeannie said...

I think we are related. LOL! I have a stash of that same dragonfly tissue paper. My favorite local store used to use it and I would beg them to throw in a few extra pieces when I made purchases. Then there is Joggles. I shopped for my sister. She is a paper person, so it is the perfect place to find new things for her to try. Then I remembered Judy Coates Perez mentioned how much she loved Marabu…..the easy marble looks like fun, the paints, too. Needless to say Mrs. Claus will be sending me a very nice Christmas box. I will give the free Marabu crayons to my sis. ;)

Michele Matucheski said...

Always good to test things out! This one didn't quite work as planned, but from the pictures you got some interesting effects that would work for backgrounds -- maybe not when your focus is a dragonfly printed on the tissue paper, though. I took some classes at Joggles back in the day -- That might be where I took my first book binding class way back when ...

The Idaho Beauty said...

Oh Jeannie, how fun to hear from another Joggles junkie! And I can't believe you also have some of that tissue paper. For me, it came wrapped around a purchase I made from the same shop whose brown paper bag I've adapted for the cover of my book and inspired the dragonfly theme. Can't believe how long it sat waiting to be put away until it dawned on me, OHHHH - I can use this in my book!

I haven't had time to do much testing with the Marabu paints, but what little I have, I think I like them for on textiles, at least for my purposed, which is mostly stamping. As for the Easy Marble, I've decided to stay away from it. After watching numerous videos and reviews from people who tried it, it dawned on me that why it was working is because it forms a skin on top of the water, like the skin when you heat milk. One user complained that you really couldn't work a pattern in it, that the paint stuck on the comb tines pulling off the surface. I went back to the original video I watched and could see what she was talking about. Well, any time you try to make a complex process "easy", you may have some sacrifices. ;-)

The Idaho Beauty said...

Michele, I'm beginning to think I was remembering wrong about what she was demonstrating. It may have been prints on deli paper rather than tissue paper. Doesn't change the wisdom of testing first though! I have since cut out some dragonflies carefully and closely to the black line and adhered them to that page and its flaps - oh, it worked really well! A post about that to come.

The Idaho Beauty said...

Mary, I may be enjoying this taking it easy healing period a bit too much! Pressure off for working on the "serious" stuff which eliminates any guilt I may feel about working on the "unimportant" stuff. It's all important of course, but sometimes one can get so wrapped up in producing for exhibits, a lot else gets pushed aside.