Decorative Scrap Papermaking + tut

After spending a delightful afternoon with handmade shop paper making decorative hearts it seemed a pity to waste the scraps that lay on the floor and the table. I'd been doing fabric mache the other day and decided to make use of the paper offcuts by reworking them into a totally new surface.

As well as plant, wrapping and leaf paper I'd been using an old book rescued from Swapshop, a bio of Madame Pompadour parts of which had beautiful itallic script in french that made a beautiful contrast with the subtle cream and browns of the plant paper from Arcadia.

Step 1: lots of paper scraps, glue, water , cartridge paper and an old paintbrush

Step 1: Start off with a water/glue mix of 70/30%. Paint a sheet of cartridge paper and start to lay the offcuts and torn pieces of paper onto the surface.
Step 2: Gradually build up 3 different surfaces of stripes and text,stripes, text and cutout hearts and a mix of coloured, decorated surfaces with text.*



Step 3: Finish off with final paint over of the glue mix and leave them to dry.


Step 4: Once dry they can be cut out into shapes to make more hearts, stitched over by the machine to make mixed media art, added to fabric to make an art quilt, back with fresh card and used as gift tags................... its really quite endless


* You can also use threads, stamps, any kind of paper ephemera to build up your surface. Different types of text can be exciting next to plain prints