Provocative Paste Papers
Making paste papers brings back memories of finger painting with the abandon of a child. However, as you will see from some of the examples, paste papers can plump up your paper stash in a beautifully sophisticated manner.
Rhonda Miller has a tutorial for making paper paste on My Handbound Books. Her Paste Paper tutorial is just as helpful. She recommends a book called Marbled and Paste Papers: Rosamond Loring’s Recipe Book, if you are serious about mastering the art of paste paper making. I have The Art of Making Paste Papers, by Diane Maurer, and consider it an excellent resource as well.
There are many different paste recipes: you can use wheat paste like Rhonda, cornstarch like Debbie Dodd, or cake flour like Jenny Taliadoros. Some artists add alum, some add peppermint oil. Plain wallpaper paste works, and does not require cooking. Paint is then added to the paste. Sage Reynolds describes his experimentation with the many different recipes for paste (Our History With Pastepapers), as well as examples of the papers themselves. He shared his own resultant recipe with Martha Stewart, which means we can all use it. (Reynolds also has a video where he show how to make “silk paper,” using paste, silk, and mulberry paper. Another video shows you some of his paper tapestries, which are woven out of strips of painted paper.)
Shannon Phillips, who calls her blog Paper Works by Paper Nerds, has some gorgeous paste paper examples and offers classes so that others can join in the fun. She offers more examples on Flickr.
Susan Gross offers her own delectable set of paste papers, including what she calls ink on paste drawings, which I would like to find more information about. (Susan also wrote this post, but she was spare in her descriptions of her techniques.) I was very taken with her paste paper collages.
Claire Maziarczyk creates stunning paste paper examples which she also fashions into pastepaper quilts. Elissa R. Campbell, of Blue Roof Designs, posts about those “quilts.” She was very excited about visiting Claire’s studio, where she purchased the “most beautiful paper ever” and even came home with a swatch book.
Roann Mathias does calligraphy on paste papers (I’m swooning, here).
Renee Troy has these painterly paste papers which she has used to create books, cards and mosaic collages.
I could go on, and on, and on ~ this is such a rich area to explore. I am enamored with the simplicity of the technique, coupled with gorgeous results. But I have looked enough.
My imagination is pumped (the well is full to overflowing)! I am going to head into the kitchen to cook up a batch of paste so that I can create some paste papers of my own.
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