Art of Texture Day 9 - Walnut Ink on Brown Kraft Paper

Walnut Ink Texture - 4166

I've been wanting to take Kim Klassen's Art of Texture - Secrets Revealed class for quite some time.  This fall, she made it available through her Test Kitchen.  Yahoo!

So far it's been a lot of review on how to use and make brushes in PSE, how to add textures--a lot of things I've learned in Kim's Beyond Layers and Beyond Beyond classes (also currently available through The Test Kitchen).  I didn't feel like I had to take such careful notes on these sections because I'm pretty comfortable with these techniques by now.  Thanks, Kim, for teaching me well in those year-long weekly classes. ;-)

On Day 9, we're finally getting to some mess-making!

In this lesson, Kim suggested we use Walnut Ink on a crumpled piece of brown craft paper.  I'm flush with walnut ink since I made about a gallon of it a few years ago!

The great thing about this lesson is that Kim explains how to do it manually (with real paper and paint/inks) but also how to get a similar digital effect in PhotoShop.  Sorry--I can't tell you exactly how I did it.  If you want to know, you'll have to sign up for the class.

For instance, for the manual version, Kim suggested using drywall tape, but since I didn't have any, I pulled my digital image into PSE and used her Linen texture brush for a similar effect.  It's very subtle, but you can see it if you look closely.   Now, looking around the house, I might have been able to use a strip of shelf-liner as a physical stamp.

I took the picture above while the ink wasn't quite dry--It still showed translucent in some places on the paper.  Some parts even picked up as blue in the photo.  After it dried completely, it wasn't nearly as interesting--pretty uniformly brown now that it's dry.  The paper version is crying out for some additional highlights ...

Interesting thing about the Walnut Ink ...  Kim's link for more info on walnut ink was broken, so I Googled it to see what I could find.  I came up with some new recipes for DIY walnut ink that included rubbing alcohol or Vodka as a preservative.  I totally missed that in 2011 when I was making my batches of walnut ink--though I did use some clove.  Now I want to try both preservatives to see how well they work.  I certainly have enough ink to experiment!

I opened my first batch of walnut ink, and was surprised that it didn't smell bad.  Some of it smelled pretty compost-y when I first made it--due to fermenting the walnuts before making the ink.  The ink seems to have mellowed nicely over time--like a fine wine?  Still--I don't think I'm going to taste it!

The beauty of this is that I can make more physical pages for journal covers, and photograph them and use them perpetually in digital images as texture layers.

More experiments to come!

Fibre & Stitch

I finally bought a subscription to this online magazine devoted to mixed media techniques.

What a surprise to discover that many of the authors are people whose blogs I read regularly. Just reading the first issue felt like hearing from old friends! People like :

Lynda Monk at Purple Missus
Carol McAfee at Textile Tales
Sue Bleiweiss
Vicki Welsh at Field Trips in Fiber
Terri Stegmiller at StegArt
Lois Jarvis at RustTex

Now I know how they created some of the wonderful things on their blogs! :-)

Reading Fibre & Stitch is giving me many more ideas and techniques I want to try. I think I'm going to have to set up a schedule. Summer is 1/3 over, and the wet studio is closed in the heart of winter ...

I should have no problem finding techniques to try and topics to post on!

Mixed Media Class - Brown Paper Bag Surface

This is my brown paper bag surface.
An ordinary brown paper shopping bag cut to a single piece of paper, crumpled, and painted with brown acrylic paint. I discovered that the watered-down paint did not hold enough color to be effective. So this batch is straight from the bottle.


After it dried, I crumbled it again, and flattened it out, then rubbed it with a regular ink pad in Coffee Bean and Copper. The ink pad hit the high spots and highlighted them nicely.

Then I fused this paper bag surface to a piece of black cotton. I used Stitch Witchery this time, because it's is more readily available here in town. I'm out of Misty Fuse ... The Stitch Witchery seemed to work out very well for this application. It's a little bit more course than the Misty Fuse, but acceptable for this project as the paper bag is not some delicate organza!

My husband wanted a padded case in which to keep his new laptop computer. So I layered the paper bag fabric with Warm 'n Natural batting and a green flannel for the lining. I bound all the edges so they'd be finished, and sewed up the sides to make the following laptop case. No straps or handles. He'll keep this in his backpack.





My husband loves it! "Very Manly-looking" he says. And the coolest part will be people's faces when he tells them it's made from a recycled paper bag! Doesn't it look like old, warn leather?

Depending on how it wears, we may decide to put some kind of sealant on it to protect the paper cover. It was a little too much work to have it just shred on the first trip!

It's amazing what can be done with these techniques!