In the craft session last week we decided to do crayon batik and bubble prints. They are lovely, simple processes, but quite effective. Also with endless results.
CRAYON BATIK
1. Colour the entire surface of your paper very densely with your crayon pattern or picture, making sure you leave no paper showing.
2. Scrunch the paper into a tight ball. (We did this a few times to get lots of crinkles)
3.Lay it out flat and brush a thinned coat of acrylic paint all over the paper. (We used quite dark colours)
4. Whilst the paper is wet, sponge off the excess paint.
5. Lay the paper, picture side down, on some scrap paper and then cover with more scrap paper.
6. Press with a warm iron. Don't use a sliding motion, just press!
BUBBLE PRINTS
This is a fun one to do with children, just as long as they blow and don't suck! I always get a good response with this one in workshops!
1. Mix together water, washing-up liquid and paint of your colour. It's a bit hit and miss with quantities and depends if you want an intense finish or something more delicate. A little water, lots of washing-up liquid and then build up the paint to the intensity you want. I use small bowls and then there's less blowing to get it to the top.
2. Blow and blow and blow. (I always seem to sound like a drowning cat at this point) Whilst the bubbles are almost pouring over the edges of your bowl, take your paper and lightly place on top of the bubbles. You should be able to do this a few times before your bubbles disappear below the bowl's rim.
Mix up bowls of different colours and have fun!
I have just completed my first bit of my concertina book, before it heads off to the next person to work on. I decided on 'sayings' for my theme. My two pictures were 'the wings of desire' and 'a little bird told me.' It took ages for me to decide what sayings to do. I sat there for a painfully long, long, long time just mmming and ahhing!
It has helped doing these pictures. I have felt so down and cut off since I crashed my car. I found out today it has been written off. My niece has very kindly asked me if I would like to borrow her little mini. It will be good to ferry around in one again. I still miss my little blue one after all these years.
We also made concertina books. We are making them to do an art swap of kinds, although the book comes back to the original artist. You draw, paint or collage, etc on a few pages and then pass it on to the next artist to do their bit carrying on from yours. ( Hope that makes some sense to you?) You keep doing this until the book is full and then it goes back to the person who made the book in the first place. We are making up our own themes to keep a thread throughout each book. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do. I thought may be stories!?! Fairy tales or favourite stories. I'd like to use different paint techniques to build the pages up. I find that although I do this kind of stuff in workshops, I never really do it for myself. So it would be inspirational and a challenge to myself to this in the book!
Take pieces of paper and mountain and valley fold in a concertina fashion. Each page that is created needs to be folded to fit the same size as your card covers.
If you need to add more length to your book, just make sure that before you start folding the paper, make a small fold at the end of the paper and then measure out your pages from what is left. This small fold will then be glued to another small fold on your other piece of paper. (Hope that also makes sense) The picture below shows where I have glued my two small folds together. They sit on a main fold between two pages (on a mountain fold).
I also glued two pieces of paper together where it would sit in the middle of a page. As I said I like a lived in look, so I wasn't worried by it being perfect and neat.
I thought the empty stalks were rather pretty too. I've stuck them on my studio ceiling!