Visible Stitch: Chapter 5 Colour Study–Part 3 Messy Days: making coloured papers and textured surfaces

A Messy Day – Making Coloured Areas

Preparing textured and coloured papers. The weather is fine and warm so it was a good day for drying messy papers and fabrics, and coloured papers. My hands are green – good job I do not have a hot date tonight… but the results have added to my stash of papers for using in my sketch books. Wish I had had some of these when I doing the Shape Chapter – the backgrounds would have been so much more interesting! Note to self - Keep a well stocked stash in different colours!

Textured papers include: crumpled tissue on card; distressed scrim on card; plaster & PVA on card and fabrics (with imprints); distressed sinamay on fabric and card. Papers and tissue paper coloured with dilute Brusho.


Textured papers & fabric	Painted Tissue with Brusho	Painted Papers with Brusho

Another messy day – Making more coloured areas

The weather continues to be gorgeously warm, so the garage doors are open to dry even more papers, and experiment with different techniques within my colour scheme. A selection of results are below. For the coloured papers in reds and yellows the base layer is a wash of dilute acrylic paint on wallpaper lining paper. These have dried slightly paler than expected, but that is not a problem as they will probably be background papers. Interesting patterns and colour were achieved by laying them out on (and stacking on top of each other) the draining board to take up pools of paint in the ridges. With some papers I used a wax crayon to create a mask before painting – I had hoped when these were ironed the wax would melt into the paper but it didn't, but I do have some interest patterns underneath the colour wash.

I used some commercial coloured tissue paper to wax (hot iron and candle wax method). This has created lovely jewel like translucent colours. The Thai silk tissue paper also took the wax well. On one sample, I stuck some space dyed scrim on to the tissue with hot wax for more texture. Grated colour wax crayons were melted onto paper giving a speckled effect. The silicon paper used to protect the iron has taken a shadow which is another interesting surface texture. I tried painting on plastic (clingfilm), I had hoped to create a crackle effect on the paper it was laid on, but the pain was too feint. I do though have subtle translucent colour on my clingfilm. Then it was experimenting with cocoon strippings and silk inclusions to make silk paper with texture.

Finally some marbling – this really should go into the next chapter… My friend Norma and I had a session using marbling inks on fabrics (with a semi-liquid base of manutex to create a stable surface). Thinking of my colours, rather than pattern or shape I achieved some good results, the colours from this session (labelled Marbling 01,02,03 below) are vibrant and have taken to the different fabrics well. I tried another technique – using shaving foam as a base, this time with silk paints. The colours sitting on top of the foam looked vibrant and mixed well on the foam (Image Marbling 04 below), but when the fabric was dry the colour were quite muted (Marbling 05) even though this was a good quality white cotton. Trying to get colour on to calico was a disaster (Marbling 06) the colour looked very dull and the pattern is blotchy – this is a problem when using the foam as the surface is not as even as the manutex and the foam can adhere to the fabric in blobs which then dry as dollop of colour rather than the swirly pattern. I would use the manutex method again as it produced good results, and having photographed the marbled fabric, I can repeat parts that I particularly like by printing directly onto fabric using my computer and printer..


Painted papers with Acrylics & Crayon	Waxed tissue paper	Waxed Thai tissue paper

Grated, melted wax on paper	Crayon shadow on silicon paper	Waxed tissue embossed

Marbling 01	Marbling 02	Marbling 03


Marbling 04	Marbling 05	Marbling 06

'Silk Paper' with inclusions 01	Dilute Acrylic on Bondaweb	Dilute Acrylic on plastic cling film

Taking my experiments further I borrowed an embossing machine to play with putting texture onto my coloured papers, and use it for over printing colour onto some of them. Some of the results are OK, but by using commercial embossing folders the results are dictated by the patterns. Using a brayer to coat the inside of the folder with acrylics produced some interesting results on both sides of the papers. However, what was interesting was that I could put damp fabric inside a painted embossing folder then using the machine to print the pattern on it. I also could use a random selection of washers from the tool box to imprint on papers; this is interesting as it means the machine could be used for producing collagraphs. I am not sure all my results today are entirely relevant to my theme, but it was an interesting experiment and diversion. Below is a selection now in my stash.


Embossing on coloured tissue	Embossing on brown paper	Embossing on cartridge paper	Experiment embossing with random washers

Using acrylics to print with one colour and emboss on painted papers	Using acrylics to print with blend of two colours and emboss on painted papers	Emboss and print onto calico	Emboss and print onto white cotton