Ready for a sandwich?

A paper sandwich, that is.

These pretty sandwiches make a lovely addition to paintings, whether they're filled with threads, dried flowers and leaves, or other very thin material.

You'll need some (Golden) gloss polymer medium, a paint brush/water, some thin materials and a sheet of mulberry paper folded in half.

Paint half of  your mulberry paper liberally with the gloss medium, and place your materials on top.  Notice that there is a very thin (love these accidents!) layer of phalo green paint on the butcher paper sitting below the mulberry sheet.

Coat the 'other inside' of the paper with the gloss medium (I move my brush from the fold outwards to help keep the paper straight) and carefully fold the one side over the other, patting gently, gently, GENTLY to ensure all areas adhere.  The mulberry paper is very fragile.

Paint the outside of the sandwich  and leave it to dry.  When it's dry, you can also paint the back of the sandwich if you're planning on using this as a window pane in a double-sided painting.

 When it's dry, you can place it onto another painting...you'll note the undertone of green - that accident which was waiting to happen.  This sandwich is going to make a lovely addition to a future painting!

What kind of sandwich will you have for lunch today?

Sandwich anyone?

I love YouTube for the endless array of creative techniques one can find there.  One of the recent ones I've tried is a method of bonding paper napkins to card stock.  It's a bit like building a sandwich:

Starting with a sheet of parchment paper laid out on an iron board, you then add a layer of card stock, and cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap.

The next layer is a single sheet of napkin, FACE UP (most napkins have three sheets, and although it's a bit fiddly getting down to the single top layer, it's well worth it).

It's topped off with another layer of parchment paper, and then ironed on the hottest setting until the plastic wrap melts and bonds the napkin to the card stock.

You can reuse the parchment paper many times (or at least until you burn it past redemption by inadvertently leaving the iron on it).

Some napkins have a 'shadow' or 'ghost' middle layer in them, and they can make interesting backgrounds for paintings, too.

The resulting (heavier) paper has a lovely textile feel to it, and can look quite different depending on the colour of card stock you use behind the very thin napkin.  In the one below, I've used white card stock on the right and a hot yellow on the left.

And because I love to experiment, Alice Saltiel and I checked out the process utilizing painted papers;  it takes a few seconds longer, but works like a charm, and creates a bond that appears stronger than the spray glue I've been using.  YAY!  Take note that the better quality stretch wrap creates a better quality finished product, of course.

If you try this, I'd love to see your photos and hear your comments (windinn@shaw.ca).  Want to test it with other papers?  Let me hear about that too!