Mixed Media Paper Making: Create Handmade Paper and Sketchbook Cover

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Vivian Edgar, a mixed media artist from Scotland. And I would love to have you in this class. I'm going to be teaching you how to meet handcrafted paper and to make it from things like organic and reusable materials. And this is a brilliant way of creating some really beautiful and textured works of art. And you can also make things like artisans, stationary paper for watercolor paintings, and also things like collage papers for future art projects. My work has been exhibited in many, many galleries and a half to see that using textured materials like handmade paper to be really valuable no matter what the subject is that in painting. So by experimenting with all these different materials and techniques, you'll come up with your own type of paper, your own method. And that's really exciting to discover. So I can't wait to see what you come up with Him in the project gallery. So just go for it and have fun. 2. Class Project: For this project, we will take your favorite pieces and create a front cover there. Well, not only fill you with inspiration every time you open it, but also others desperate to see what is inside. We'll start by scavenging for suitable materials and soaking them in water. Blending them together to make a paper pulp using a molten decal to create sheets and then move on to drawing the paper. Your aim is to discover which paper creations like best, and glue them onto your sketch book or journal when they're dry. The beauty of handmade paper is that not only is it stunning in its own right, but it can also be really useful. Look how uninteresting the sketchbook books from the outside. You would have no idea that there is bright, cheery and inspiring are on the inside. I chose to use our handmade paper in this way as our members and our students being totally stuck, as told to get my sketch book covers to stand out. You can create the image on top by tearing up your paper and pasting it down and bits kind of collage style, or simply pick your favorite and glue them down as Whole sheets side-by-side. I really encourage you to experiment with different materials and to let yourself create messy art. Have fun scavenging for supplies. And I'll see you in the next video. 3. Gathering Your Supplies: Hi, This video will give you a quick introduction to the tools and supplies that you need to make your handmade paper. Firstly, we need lots of paper that was on its way to the recycle bin. All types of scrap paper or any plastic free paper is fine. Just bear in mind this stronger scrap paper like printer paper, will produce stronger handmade paper in the end, but also takes longer to dry. Here's a good idea to have lots of weight and cream paper in your mixture. If you want to alter the color later on, it is much easier to do that with light colored paper. Next, we need some tools. Firstly, you need a food blender, handheld or tabletop ones are both fine. Secondly, we need what's called a molten Deco. You can buy one online from a specialist shop where you can make your own from using frames and mesh. But I'm just using one, the small one they go online. They can get much larger ones. They create really large sheets of paper hairdryers handy to have when it comes to drawing the paper, but it's not essential. We also need a bowl and a larger container for the paper making process. Next, we need to gather our organic materials. You can see from this video that I sometimes like to scavenge for things like dry leaves or most in the countryside. But things like herbs, tea leaves, and coffee grains from your kitchen cupboard or just as good. The reason I started using organic materials and my mixed media art start with because they were cheap, are often free. They're great for experimenting with under perfect for nature-inspired art, which is what I do a lot of the customize your handmade paper even more. Having some art supplies such as watercolor paints or inks, common very useful. So to recap, to make basic handmade paper, or you needed some scrap paper, food blender, a large container to hold water, and the molten deco to add more texture color in detail. You add in the mixed media. 4. Soak Recycled Paper: Hi. Now that we've gathered our supplies, we'll move on to the first stage of our paper making process. Swat done here is I've just torn up lots of bits of scrap paper into bits about this size. You don't really need to make it very complicated. Just tear up your paper and put it in. So I'm putting in some brown now and that was like packaging paper. It just keeps enforced and some tearing that up. Have to say it is good to have lots of white in there because it's easier to alter it later. You don't have to be too precise about this. You can cut it up into smaller pieces if you like. I like to taste it because it gives us like a softer edge and that makes it more natural if you blend it and there's still a wee bit left of paper, it looks much better. It's already soft. Let's pour some water into the bowl. Soap for at least 2 h, preferably overnight if your scrap paper is really thick or you want to make some really smooth paper, we're going to make one big batch. We're going to put that into different balls so we can use them for different experiments. This is a much better system than repeating the same process over and over with different materials. Now that we've torn off our scrap paper and has been soaking for at least 2 h. We can move on to the next stage, blending our scraps with mixed media. 5. Blending Scrap Paper with Mixed Media: It is now time to blend all our materials together to make a paper pulp. This is a second stage of the paper making process. My paper has been soaking overnight. You can see that the paper has kept its shape but feels very soggy, is no suitable for using a blender. You can use a hand-held blender or tabletop one. The tabletop one is much more powerful and it works faster. But I used the hand-held blender because it takes up a lot whitespace. Never going to add the mixed media, the organic mixed media, but I personally find this the most exciting bit. So we have as an option that some rose Marie, I have some garlic kind of bold leaves, so I don't want to go in and already we can blast them up. I have some tea leaves, I'll split open the bag and poor that and I could do that. And also some moss that I can found on a forest block that was quite cool. And they're bidding in mind, these are all dry ingredients. You can see how after I've blended the scrap paper together for a few seconds, I've poured some of the mixture into a separate bowl. I will do a different mix media experiment for each. So for this batch, I'm going to use some tea leaves. Yeah, but before I do that, I'm going to split my mixture into two. So I can do to lots of mixed media experiments. I'll do one with tea leaves. I think. I'll do the other one with Moss, right? So first of all, by a split our mixture. Now I'll add my tea leaves to this. So I'm just going to break this up for this in. That should be enough. Why not? I'll put in some garlic salt leaves as well. See how that comes out. See what kind of texture I'll get. I'm just splitting out with my fingers. That will make it easier to blend with the whisk. Alright, I'll get my blender. I'll now show you a video of my second experiment. And for that one is most that I found in a forest walk. And I'm mixing it with my paper pulp of got some moss here that I picked up on a forest walk. So I'm just going to split some of that up. I'm going to put it in the second batch of paper pulp, so we'll just do that. I need to break up too much because the blender will do that and that's its job. Just use the blender. One tip is, if you want to make smooth paper, then blend it until you can hardly see any paper edges. But if you want a more textured look, which is what I often like, then stop blending a bit sooner than that. I hope you enjoy mixing your scrap paper with your mixed media. And I'll see you in the next video where we turn our paper pulp into paper sheets using our molten deck. 6. Using a Mould and Deckle: Now that we have our paper pulp made, we will now use our main tool is a mold and deco. This is made up of two parts. An essential tool for paper-making as a mold, which is a frame with a mesh attached to it. And there's the decal, and that's the frame of the same size. Alongside your mold and Deco, you will need a large container filled with water for your pulp into the water and give it a swirl. Next, take your molten deco with the two frames, press tightly together and lift up your first sheet of paper. Now I'm thinking here, yeah, my sheet looks good, but I would like it to be a bit thicker. Let us use our molten decal note and see what the sheets look like. Takeoff the Deco layer sheet down onto an absorbent cloth. Gently use a cloth to absorb any excess water and lift off the mold to reveal the sheet. Handmade paper can take one to three days to dry properly depending on where you put it. This is how my tea leaves paper-making experiment went. It was all going so well until I lifted off the deck or some paper pulp didn't stick to the pink fabric as I'd hoped. So the sheet didn't turn out too well. If this happens, just scraped the pub off the fabric and put it back in the bowl or keep the paper sheet as is, and use it and collages later. I'll see you in the next video. We're over-learned to dry, customize and to shape our handmade paper. 7. Dry, Shape and Embellish Your Paper: Now that we've laid out our wet handmade sheets of paper onto absorbent cloth, will now look at the different ways to dry your paper. My preferred method is to lay them flat to dry and to use close to absorb any excess water. This will one is fine and it's perfect as it provides the heat, but no much power. So it doesn't blast your lovely handmade paper to bits. While your paper is drying flat on the table, you can paste small images onto the surface of it. Uses the same principles they can bash. Choose an image of fin paper, e.g. tissue paper or rice paper. And it will stick to the surface, just spread water over it gently while the paper dries and it will adhere to the surface. And love doing that. It looks really cool. Can even mold your paper into different shapes while it dries. You can print it with different textures, surfaces to create cool patterns. Have fun experimenting with lots of different techniques. And I'd love to see your work in the project gallery. 8. Seal and Protect Your Paper: Hi, We're now ready to think about and to seal and protect our handmade paper. If we want to keep our beautiful handmade paper the way it is. If we don't want to embellish it any further, then we'll use egg whites to seal the surface of the paper. We do that on both sides so it doesn't curl up. If we've used lots of mixed media and the surface is really textured than its best. Use a watery PVA colors to see what papers. This is especially important when we use our handmade paper to embellish our sketch book covers. Just like we're going to do for the class project. Join me in the next video where she or some final thoughts and ideas. 9. Final Thoughts and Ideas: I would love to see your experiments and to learn which combinations of mixed media paper pulp worked for you. Do you prefer thick or thin? How many paper do you like? Bolder texture paper or do you go for a more subtle look? I would love to know that or to printable guides to help you with paper-making. One includes lots of mixed media ideas and the other one's summarizes the paper making process for you. If you've got any questions to do with anything but that we've covered in the class, I'll do my very best to answer them.