Making Your Own Background Papers

I love buying papers.  It is easy and not too expensive, but it isn't original or even your own art.  So one day while I was looking up tutorials on youtube, I came across this inchie tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCX8BTadbLY .  I really thought this was cool so out I go to mu studio to make some of my own.  These are some of the results:

So I thought I would show step by step how I made them and then show an example of something I made from it.  The pages in and of themselves look like a mess, but when cut down and used as a background, they are quite interesting.  And each item created is unique.  If you really like what you made and want to use it in multiple projects, just take it down to Kinkos and make color copies of it for future use.


Step1:  Gather your paints.  I use Golden's Fluid and Heavy Body Acrylic paints.

I really like the richness of Golden's Acrylics.  My favorite color is Quinachridone Gold, it has such a warm glow to it.  I like to use it as a finishing glaze to my work, it brings the colors all together.


Step 2:  Gather your stencils and other things.

I have a great set of brass stencils I bought as a lot on eBay, there are over 300 pieces.  I love using bubble wrap and whatever else I can find that will give me unique markings.  I apply the paint with a brayer, it makes such wonderful and deep layers.

Step 3: Gather your papers for a base.

I have all sorts of papers like newspapers, I especially like foreign ones (the one in the photo is an Asian paper I bought in Chinatown in Los Angeles), dictionary pages and some Asian papers I bought in Los Angeles.


Step 4:  Layer your paint onto your paper base.

Sometimes I dribble the paint on one at a time brayering in between colors and other times I dribble all the colors on and brayer them all at once.  The one thing is that when you dribble it all at once, you tend to get a very thick layer of paint so I will put another piece of paper on top and pull it up and it gives you such cool patterns and a neat base for a second piece. (see example below)

                                           ...after brayering....

                                          ....sheets that I used to pick up the excess paint.

Step 5:  Now start decorating.

Step 6:  Start using your papers!  I was using mine to make a skinny:

and the finished project (not a good representation as the soft gel gloss is still wet and the glare from the flash.  I added a word with it's definition colored with Quinachridone Gold and a mini popsicle stick also colored with Quin Gold and stamped with a word.