Tag Archives: marbled paper

September 15, 2012 · 7:54 am

Success followed by frustration

I did finish last week’s marbling session by using the smaller trays to make some 11″ x 14″ and 8.5″ x 11″ sheets.  They came out very nicely and I was having a great time.  I pushed it a bit too far and the paint began to lose cohesion and the carrageenan was getting old. Fortunately, it seems that both tend to fall apart at the same time.  Guess it’s a sign that it’s time to either make new batches or close up.

Here are some of the smaller sheets:

I enjoy working with colored paper, especially dark shades, because the color of the paint is intensified and altered by the background. These sheets were made with the same colors as those above. No green or red paint was used: that’s just the color of the paper affecting the result.

 

Here are some closeups of the various sheets.

My frustration is that these photos are no where near the color of the original sheets.  The original photos were even worse!  I spent a lot of time adjusting the color to get the hues in the correct range, but all these sheets are way too light. I played with brightness and contrast controls, but still couldn’t get it right.  Frustrating!  All this after taking dozens of photos in several different lights with different settings.  I don’t have problems with light-colored sheets, but darks are a mess.  Rich greens also seem to always be off-color. (As is my language dealing with these!)

I have no intention of getting a better camera, but I need to be able to get accurate pictures if I want to sell the sheets on line.  Frustrating!  Compare the last sheet of the three with the same sheet (2nd from right) in the top photo.  The top is much closer to the real color of the sheet.

More pictures of the end of this session.

 

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August 30, 2012 · 6:45 am

Watching Paint Dry

Marbling paints, that is!  Yes, I finally got out the marbling trays again and had some fun.  My main goal was to make some more sheets with blue as the primary color.  I like it and tend to use it a lot.  I also wanted to try some monochromatic sheets. I had done a few with just green, white and black and found they form a nice contrast to my usual work. I used this piece on a portfolio.

I started out with four blues, but found that one tube hadn’t been sealed properly and the paint just wouldn’t dissolve in the water or float on the size.  Frustrating. The black was working nicely, both producing a lovely grey and a strong black, depending on how I used it and I did get a few relatively monochromatic sheets.

I also played a lot with the accent colors I had chosen.   In this case, almost overworking the pattern by adding an extra layer of raking.  In contrast, on this piece I decided to print the first pass of the stylus.       I rather like the bold result, but I’m not sure that I will be able to use it on my books. The pattern of spots was produced by paint that had not completely expanded when I started making the get-gel.  I had been intrigued with them on another piece because they looked like seed pods.

I also marbled some more maps.      I have to be careful when I work with any paper that has already been printed.  The pattern has to remain light enough that the words or pictures can still be recognized. If the pattern is too intricate or the colors too dark, the point of marbling on that type of paper is lost. I’m pleased with these maps. One is Los Angeles, the other Louisiana.

Here are groupings of all the large sheets I marbled in this session.  I’m pleased with most of them although, as usual, there are a few clunkers!

I’m still planning to do a few more small sheets as I’ve moved to the small tray now.  I have some dark card stock that I’d like to play with, but that may have to wait.

You can see more of my papers and the books and boxes I make from them at my shop, Losing Her Marbles, on Etsy or on this page.

 

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August 12, 2012 · 10:47 am

Where Did That Week Go?

Busy, busy week. Not sure quite what happened, but I know that the painters finally came to start work on my porch, my company left and I finally mowed the grass.  To update the trifecta, first the pickles did get canned, another 12 pints. 

I finished one book as a sample for a potential customer.

The final bit was making more Treasure Towers with maps on the outside.  They are close to being finished, with just folding the interior boxes and gluing them to the outside.  Keeping the two blue/purple towers separated with their proper papers was a challenge, but I think I have them right.  It really wouldn’t make too much difference as their colors are very similar, but when I put a lot of effort into choosing just the right piece of paper, I hate it when I mess them up at the last minute.  That’s one reason I never work on more than four items at once.  There’s just way too much chance for papers getting switched.

Here are the towers and the paper cut and folded for the boxes.

On a totally different note, I’ve started harvesting potatoes from my garden.  There’s nothing better than a freshly dug potato!  Here’s the harvest for today.
The cherry tomatoes are overflowing.  I may have to figure out how to can them!

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August 1, 2012 · 10:43 am

Home again with more boxes and way too many cucumbers

I arrived  home again and was immediately faced with a deadline.  Before I left for North Carolina, I had started five new Treasure Towers and assumed I would have plenty of time to finish them after getting home.  Of course, I hadn’t counted on delays caused by illness, weather and general negativity. Drop-off day for the new show at the Arts Center was Monday and it took a real push to finish the towers in time. I was pleased with the results: All the papers on the correct boxes with no last minute switches or upside downs.  Mistakes caused by pressure & rushing seem to be plaguing me recently.  I hope the jinx has run its course.  Here are the finished towers at the Arts Center. I didn’t have time to make “artsy” photos, but it gives me a record of what I’ve done.

The third tower has a print of a painting of Keuka Lake by Jane Terry on the outside instead of my marbled paper.  As I was photographing these, I realized there were none with maps on the covers.  I often put marbled local or area maps on the outside of the tower and these have been very popular.  I wasn’t planning on it, but I should probably do another set with maps before the summer people and tourists leave in September.  I hope I can find enough maps already marbled!

On the garden front, I came home to a jungle of tomato, squash and cucumber vines and even a couple of heads of broccoli.  First task was the cucumbers as they spoil fastest. The cukes are huge, but still sweet and fine for making bread and butter pickles. I did two more batches, 22 pints, if I’ve counted correctly (not counting the ones before my trip) and more to come.

The cherry tomatoes are just coming on, both orange and red.  They are oversized this year, but still sweet and flavorful.  For the first time I’ve been able to outwit the rabbits and actually harvest some broccoli and cauliflower.  I harvested one small watermelon just a bit early (still delicious) and a second will be dessert today.  Again, for the first time, the acorn squash has really gone to town and I’ll have quite a few that are good-size in the fall.  The potatoes are almost ready to be dug.

In spite of the late start and my intial pessimism, this looks to be my most succesful garden ever.

I am really pleased!

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July 7, 2012 · 10:44 am

Accomplished! Pickles & Portfolios

The last few days have been very productive, both for me and for the garden.  When  I was in the garden, I started picking cucumbers and got seven or eight ripe ones.  Many too many to eat, so it was time to make bread and butter pickles!  This is the first time in about ten years that I’ve had enough cukes to make pickles, so I was happy.  Took them inside and got them sliced, but didn’t have any onions.  Unfortunately they are not quite in season yet so had to get them at the grocery store rather than the local farm stand. Sliced the onions and put them with the cucumbers to sit in the fridge and do their thing.  By late afternoon they had sat long enough, so I started cooking up the syrup.  I had forgotten to check on the canning supplies, so a frantic search for rings and new lids took place.  I knew where the canning jars were since I have boxes and boxes of them from the years that I canned in a major way.  I grabbed the canning kettle and a box of jars just in time to add the cucumbers to the syrup.  Everything worked out in the end and I now have ten pints of pickles for the coming year and I’ll probably have lots more, if the raccoons don’t get the cucumbers first.

On the Portfolio side, I finished my next set of portfolios.  I design a way for them to hold a pad of paper that I hope is strong enough!  There were, of course, some hiccups on the way – like cutting paper the wrong size – that happens when I’m pushing to get something done.  They all worked out in the end and I’m pleased with the final results.

These are all for sale at Long’s Cards and Books in Penn Yan, NY.

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July 1, 2012 · 1:40 pm

Gardens, Portfolios and Vacations

I haven’t taken time to write about my activities recently, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been quiet.  I was able to plant a garden this year in spite of the cold April weather and it was off to a beautiful start.  Now I just have to keep it watered in all this heat.

Here’s what it looked like a week or so ago.

It’s not very big, but it gives me all the  tomatoes I can eat and delicious potatoes.  I try cucumbers every year and I think this year I will actually be feeding myself instead of the deer and rabbits.  You can see my rather makeshift fencing.  Although a determined deer could easily jump it, it seems to be enough of a discouragement that they don’t bother.  After I found a rabbit sitting inside the fence which has only 2″x3″ openings, I wrapped the bottom with chicken wire and that seems to have kept them out.  There are lots of other wonderful things for them to eat on the rest of the property, so they have to stay out of my garden!  

There is a nearby farm that has U-pick strawberries and every year I plan to get some to freeze.  It works out that I do about half the time!  This year I picked 14 quarts and was very glad I did.  It was a wonderful strawberry season. We had a lot of rain followed by hot dry weather at the perfect time.  The strawberries were luscious! Big and sweet. I’ve found that the varieties that are  huge can tend to be tasteless, especially when frozen.  These are a variety called Sparkle and they have a wonderful flavor no matter their size.

Enough of food, so what have I been doing with my paper?

As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve started making designer portfolios and last week I finished a set of four.  Here they are:

I’m very pleased with these and there was only one real problem.  On the red one somehow I made two left sides and so I could either throw it all out, have the cranes flying upside down or have the “pocket” on the wrong side.  I opted for the latter.  My next set of large portfolios will have replaceable pads on one side like the smaller notebooks do. Not sure I like this, but I’m trying to sell them in a local office supply store and the owner suggested that might help.  We’ll see.

In mid-July I’m taking off for one of my favorite places – The John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C.  My granddaughter and I will be taking a course in wood carving, so that will be a whole new world for me!  I don’t know how the blogging schedule will go for the next month, but I’ll try to pop in with pictures occasionally.

 

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June 22, 2012 · 11:14 am

Portfolios, for people who still find a need for paper

Carrying real paper documents these days seems hopelessly old-fashioned, but there are times when nothing else will do.  Sending someone a resume doesn’t need a stamp, but when you are sitting in a job interview, I’m not sure that handing out flash drives to all the participants is the way to go.  So in the hopes that someone, somewhere still carries paper and wants to make a statement at the same time, I’ve designed some portfolios that fit standard 8.5×11 letter paper.

I posted the prototype a few weeks ago and last week I made the first batch.  I forgot to photograph them before I put on their shiny packaging, so please excuse the shiny spots! Here they all are:

The outside paper and the side strips are all my hand-marbled paper, but I found that using marbled paper on the inside also was just too much, so I’ve used commercial, printed papers there.

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June 8, 2012 · 6:43 pm

Finished Books

I finished the books that I had started in the last post.  No major disasters and I’m happy with the results.  You can see the complete process in photos on this page.

Here are the completed books.

Finished Books

The three in the back row are the ones that have Clay themes.  The first is “Lady Luck”, for the duet that Clay and Dee Snider did of “Luck Be a Lady Tonight.”  It has an Italian paper with antique playing cards on the covers and endpapers that I hand-marbled.

Lady Luck

 

Lady Luck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book with title and endpapers.

 

 

 

The second book was a tribute to the version of “Lean on Me” that Clay sang on the finale.

Always Tomorrow

I titled it “Always Tomorrow” for the spirit of always going toward the next thing.  I think the pattern on the marbled covers reflects  upward aspirations.

Always Tomorrow

The endpapers are made from some wonderful Italian decorative paper that shows all the months of the year with typical activities for each month in various Italian towns.

The last book has a cover of papyrus, so I had to give it a a desert theme.  Of course,  papyrus actually grows along rivers, but I associate it with desert countries. The only song I could think of was “Get Here” which has the line “…cross the desert …” so that gave me the title for the book.  The endpapers are a yellow and brown swirl pattern that reminds me a sandstorms and deserts.

So this was a good week for me.  Now I think I’ll move on to those portfolios and notebooks I was playing with in my last post.

 

 

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May 16, 2012 · 9:44 am

Comedy, Tragedy, or Just a Mess?

I had, what I thought, was a brilliant idea as I was marbling last week.  I have been marbling pages from an old coverless copy of Shakespeare’s plays and I thought I would use the title page of “King Lear” to make a Treasure Tower. It had an interesting line drawing and the beginning of the play.  I then would marble one of the text pages in a similar palette to make the inside.  I was so enthralled with the idea that I did “Much Ado About Nothing” also.  The pages came out quite nicely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since these pages are smaller than the paper I usually use, I had to figure out new measurements for all the parts involved – boards,  outside, inside, boxes and lid – plus a bit of trial and error and I was ready to roll.

After cutting the board, I started to paste out the outside paper.  As soon as I started working with it I knew I was in trouble.  When any paper becomes damp it begins to stretch and it also becomes weaker and tears more easily.  The pages I was using were old, cheap paper and they became very fragile as soon as the paste dampened them.  They had gone through the marbling process with some care, but now I was just asking too much. I went ahead, laying the pieces of board in position, but as I folded over the edges, the paper began to fall apart!  Whoops.

By the way, you should always apply the adhesive to the paper and not to the board.  The paper stretches, the board doesn’t.  Let the paper rest for a few seconds so it has time to fully stretch before putting it on board.

I soldiered on and put the inside piece on, but the old paper just wasn’t strong enough to take the folding and unfolding the design of the Towers need.  It would have been fine as the cover of a book.  So now I have a tower that can sit on my desk and only I can see where the folds, cracks and tears are!  From three feet away, it looks great.

Second mistake.  I decided to try to reinforce the remaining paper by adhering another piece to it, just like using interfacing in sewing.  Only problem is that instead of using Japanese tissue paper, which probably would have worked, I grabbed a piece of light weight modern paper.  Another disaster!  As I’ve said a couple of times already, paper stretches when is becomes damp. If you put a pasted piece on top of a dry piece, the dry piece will try to stretch as it absorbs moisture from the pasted piece.  The result – wrinkles, lots of them!  Sometimes you can get lucky and the wrinkles will smooth out as both pieces dry and sometimes they are just a mess.

In spite of everything, I tried out one of the laminated pieces and the old paper just cracked along every place I tried to fold it.

Some pictorial proof to come, if I can bear to take the pictures.  I just hope my next great idea works out more smoothly.

As promised here’s a gallery of the disasters.  Can you spot the problems?

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May 1, 2012 · 12:33 pm

Finally, Back to Marbling

I’ve been out of commission for a while and have lots to catch up on here.  If you remember the crown I groused about, well, it turned out that the tooth needed a root canal.  Yuck!  Fortunately,  while the temporary crown was still on I knew that all was not well and went back to the dentist.  He checked things out and told me the bad news.  The only good news is that they could use the permanent crown that had already been made.  My mouth is still not back to normal, but at least it has calmed down enough so I can function.  On to better things!

Saturday I decided I had to get back to marbling.  Not that I don’t have enough paper to cover hundreds of books or make dozens of towers, but just because I love doing it.  Marbling does, however, require a lot of setup and preparation time.  I did the prep work on Saturday and started off marbling on Sunday.  Because the carrageenan breaks down over time, it’s most efficient to cram as much marbling as possible into four or five days.  After five days, results of the breakdown begin show on the paper and it’s time to pack it up.

Look for a new page on marbling soon.  (I hope!)

Not the greatest marbling session ever, but there were some successes.  That’s always the fun with marbling.  What looks great in the tray may be a mess when printed or, what frequently happens to me, the process of laying down the paper messes up. I catch a bubble or there’s a hesitation line or big speck of paint I didn’t see.  If it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun!  Above are two of the good pieces from this session.

For a slide show of this marbling, go here.

 

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