Make Collage Papers inspired by Shibori - 3 Styles

1. Let's Get Started!: You love making collages, but have always believed that making collage paper requires a lot of fancy or expensive tools, then it's time to bust that myth. Hi, everyone. My name is Ride, and I'm a multi disciplinary artist from India. I'm a top teacher over here on Skillshare. In this mini class, I'm going to show you three different ways of making collage paper inspired by the ancient Japanese technique of fabric dying called Shaboi. We're going to talk about folding techniques, inking tips, and making beautiful patterns. Without further ado, let's dive into this inky adventure. 2. What You'll Need: All right. The supplies for this class are fairly simple. We need ink, which is used for refilling ink pens, a paintbrush, and some watercolor or handmade paper, that's at least 140 GSMth. We basically need paper that absorbs water well. Something as thin as copy paper might not work for this project. As an alternate to the pen ink, you can also use acrylic ink, which will give you similar results. 3. Rectangle or Square Pattern: So the first type of fold that we're going to learn will give us the rectangle or the square pattern, and you can do this with a rectangular sheet or with a square sheet of paper. We want to fold it right in the middle to get a nice crease in the center. Then we want to fold the paper inwards once again from both the sides to get equal creases once again, and then we want to convert it into an accordion fold, which is also known as a fan fold. Once you open the paper and see it in a zig zag style, that's when you know that you've got your fan fold or your accordion fold successfully. We're going to repeat the process the other way as well. Now on this vertical strip, we will fold it upwards, get an ice crease in the middle, and then again, we fold it once more on both the sides to get equal creases. Then once again, we're going to convert this into an accordion or a fan fold. You want to press this really nicely so that your creases are crisp and clean and that will give you a clean pattern. Once you have this ready, we want to soak it into a jar or a bowl of water for about a minute or two. Usually watercolor paper or handmade paper soaks up the water pretty quickly. So you won't need to do it for more than a couple of minutes. But in case you're using a different paper, just experiment with the various dations of soaking to make sure that it's completely wet. I like to keep holding this and I keep dipping it in a couple of times just to make sure that the water is evenly spreading out on my paper. So I don't leave it to float inside the bowl. Otherwise, it gives me a very inconsistent dampness across the page. Once it's out, we basically just want to press this gently with our palms to remove all the excess water. At the end of this exercise, you should have your paper damp to touch, but it shouldn't be dripping with water. You want to get all that excess water out. Then you just want to double check that all the creases are aligned so that you get a nice crisp and clean pattern. And then you can start king it on all the four sides. Now, you can experiment with the pattern a little bit over here by king just three sides or two sides or just one side, and each of those experiments will give you a different result. For this one, I'm doing all the four sides and we want to make sure that we do at least a couple of passes so that the ink really goes in nicely into all of those folds. Make sure that you're holding this bundle from the middle so that you're able to ink all the sides easily, and you're basically creating a resist with your fingers. And once done, we want to leave this aside for 15 to 20 minutes before we unfold it. 4. Triangle Pattern: All right. So let's look at the triangle pattern. Now, the first few steps that we're going to do for the triangle pattern are exactly the same as what we did for the rectangle or the square pattern. So we start off with a basic accordion fold on whatever paper you're using. And once you have that accordion fold ready, we want to start folding it into a triangle using one of the corners, and we want to do this triangle fold also in an accordion style so that we're going back and forth with the folding. And this will give us a nice triangular pattern when we open up the paper. So this can be a little tricky because your bundle is going to get fatter and thicker with each progressing fold. You want to take your time to get those creases nice and crisp. And once again, you can open up the band just to check the Zia pattern, which will confirm that it's an accordion or a fan fold. And then we bundle it all back together, and we do the same steps, which is that we soak it in a bowl or a jar of water for at least a couple of minutes, and I like to hold it and dip it in a couple of times. I also open it up slightly every few seconds just to make sure that the water is going all the way in the inner folds. Then once again, we want to squeeze out the excess water and make sure that the bundle is not dripping, then we apply the ink on all three sides. Again, you can experiment with different patterns over here by applying the ink on just one side or two sides, and each experiment will give you different results. Once you're done, keep the bundle aside for, 15 to 20 minutes after which we will unfold it. 5. Diagonal Pattern: Right. Let's move on to the diagonal pattern. For this, the basic principle for the folding of the paper pretty much remains the same. We're going to be doing the accordion fold once more, and we're going to be doing this diagonally this time. You can work from top to bottom or bottom to top, whatever is easier for you. Over here, I'm doing bottom to top accordion fold. It's okay if your lines are not entirely 100% equidistant, but more or less you'll get nice diagonal stripes if you're somewhat there. Just give it a couple of tries and soon you'll get a hang of it. Just like the triangle fold, this one will also become a nice thick fat bundle. So you want to make sure that when you're dipping it in, you are soaking it properly for at least a couple of minutes so that the water can go inside those inner folds really, really well. And once it's out, you want to double check all the folds and the creases and just make sure that everything is in perfect alignment and squeeze out all the excess water. And then we can start applying the in. For this pattern, we apply the ink only on the left and the right side of that horizontal axis. We don't apply it on the triangular folds that you see coming out on the left side and the right side, and that's because we're going for a diagonal pattern, so we're not going to be inking all the four sides. And that's pretty much it for this particular pattern. So once again, just give it a couple of passes of ink to make sure that it's going inside all those folds. And then we just let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes before we unfold it. 6. Unfolding & Reveal: It's time to open up these beautiful inky bundles. Let's start with the rectangular one and this one comes out in a grid style. If you like as a variation, you can increase the number of folds on your paper to get a smaller grid size and that way your pattern will be slightly more dense and intricate. Then here's what you'll get when you ink only two sides of the rectangle instead of doing it on all the four sides. Then this is the triangular one and this one has come out realty, I quite like this. Then let's open up the one with the diagonal pattern as well. And here are OLA papers after drying completely for about four or 5 hours. Now it's your turn. I'd love for you to create your own Iki collage papers and share a picture with me in the projects and the resources section of this class. I can't wait to see what you make.