What a good idea, getting rid of lots of paper that was either a scrap from another project, not really useful in regard to colour or style, or simply a practice piece that doesn't pass muster...and how therapeutic is tearing up strips? Haven't done this for such a long time (shhh...maybe over sixty years!), so I got stuck in with a will.
I really do not have any magazines on hand, except for a few cooking ones that have not been assessed for useful recipes yet, so they were definately not available for ripping, not just yet anyway, but I did find a few tourist brochures left over from James and Helen's visit last December. These included a TSO annual concert programme, a couple of this years MONA FOMA festival advertisement booklets and two What's on in Hobart...and that was plenty along with some additional colours from a few lighter weight paper scraps and some unwasted paint pages. I was good to go.
A happy hour was spent ripping the chosen sheets all to shreds of various widths into one of my you-beaut project bins (thank you Karina & Sarah).
I then took one of my new folder covers and started adhering on the strips. It was slightly awkward as I had cut out an opening from the front cover, but found that the strips neatly edged the cut portion, applying some horizontally initially to cover the left and right sides of the window, then vertically to cover up the first layer...it worked a treat and all the raw edges on the folder were covered neatly.
I didn't use this folder for it's original purpose in the end. I was going to place a small calico embroidered piece into the window, but as the cover became so colourful and busy with the paper strips added, I decided instead to use the smaller third folder for the embroidery and I used the paper strip one to house another MMM effort, Number 8 - Houses, a collage piece that included a few more paper scraps. The whole journal cover is wonky and naive, and colourful...I like it a lot. I haven't sewn in the signatures yet, I like to do this when I have a couple of journals to do at the same time and find this a useful evening occupation.
I am waiting on some magnets to arrive so I can finish off the embroidery journal, as my stock is reduced to two tiny magnets and I will need several to hold this journal closed. As most of the front of the journal cover has been taken up with the embroidered piece, I don't want to encroach further with posts etc, or other sorts of closures...hopefully they won't be too long in arriving. (One lot of Aliexpress mail took six months to arrive!).
As it was a very humid day, I waited for the paper to dry off a little then I gathered them up and popped them into a warm oven to finish drying. This gave the pages the lovely texture and crinkle that oven drying imparts. Previously when I have tried to stack dipped pages together before oven drying them they have all stuck together and become uselessly torn while being separated, but these sprayed sheets did not stick at all. I was very happy with the result, and especially as I did not need to spend all day popping single sheets into and out of the oven...it was much faster for me.
Well that's about it from me...Oh...except that yesterday I learned how to add cards to my youtube videos...very neat and it allows viewers to go directly to an associated video or web address...one lives and learns...
Bye now,
Di