Not Exacto

I love paper!  No, not the junk that lands in my mailbox… Nor, the papers I push around on my desk at work!  Sigh…

I’m talking about decorative paper that is beautiful to see and touch and can add  something unique to my artwork.

I decided to learn more about paper so I signed up to take a 6-week online class on Paper Weaving with Helen Hiebert.  I learned about Helen’s class from Uppercase Magazine. Helen has an awesome blog with free tutorials, called The Sunday Paper; HelenHiebertStudio.com/blog

I finally finished the first lesson of four notecards:

 

 

I enjoyed learning these techniques.  I like the curvy designs best, (the yellow and blue backgrounds).  I will tell you the names of these papers in my next paper weaving post…

Paper weaving takes time, practice and patience I learned.  Part of the technique is learning how to cut the papers.  Although my cuts are not exacto, I am pleased with my results.

Do you have a favorite card?

Cheers! 🙂

Recycled Art

I have several paintings that I created in experiments that I wanted to recycle into something else.

I started by painting over my images with Golden fluid acrylic paints.  I added random marks and scratched into some of the paints while they were still wet with the end of my paintbrush.  Below is a frog I did on hot pressed watercolor paper:

I liked how the marks revealed some of colors underneath, like this pear painting I did on cold pressed 140 lb paper:

I found this very meditative to just play without thinking about the outcome.  Next, I decided to cut them up into squares and rectangles and draw on them with Uniball gel pens:

I then attached them to notecards:

I really like how they turned out!  What do you think?

How do you recycle your art?  I’d love to hear your creative solutions!

Happy Recycling!  🙂