Tickets at tea time

I found this on the craftzine website and I just think it's blooming amazing. 

 It is by artist Brian Jewett.

It's got me pondering how I could adapt this to my own uses. I shall keep you posted. Perhaps there is a craft tutorial in the near future...

xx V

Craft Tutorial 4: Paper Mache Animals

 Time (inc. painting): 1.5 hours approx

This tutorial is taken from one of the Craft Projects I did with the children at summer camp last week. I also posted this tutorial over on TheCraftCorner website. It's a pretty simple tutorial that you could adapt to make any animal/creature you wish, If you have ANY questions please just ask in the comments section below.

Materials: 

Plain Flour, Water

Old Newspapers (tear into strips - do not cut with scissors) 

bowl, brushes (for paste and painting) and tray to work on

Cardboard, just get old boxes from your local supermarket

Masking Tape

Paint, we used poster paints 

We started off with a cardboard structure held together with masking tape. You can add curves (like at the nose) by bunching up newspaper. Cut holes in the cardboard and add your pre cut ears. Hold with more masking tape and a bit of PVA glue. Leave the neck of the Giraffe open at the base so that the child can put their hand inside and use it as a puppet.

Then tear up sheets of newspaper into strips and coat with your paper mache paste. I always use a simple paste of plain flour and cold water. About 100ml of flour to 120ml of water. Place your first layer of strips onto the structure, make sure you can't see any of the cardboard. Place your second layer in the opposite direction. You can do a third layer if you wish. Brush the whole animal with a final layer of the paste. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.

Your animal must be bone dry before you start painting. If you have time you can paint on a base coat of white paint to cover up all the newspaper. Then paint on your final coat of paint.

And there you have it, a fabulous creature all of your own. Use balls of twine to give the animals manes or heads of hair, get your children to make up a creature all of their own, they can draw it out and write up a story about it. Make more animal puppets and then you can put on a puppet show. Hours even days of entertainment in this one. 

Now go on and make him some friends.

xx Vanessa

Matisse's painting with scissors...

"Creativity takes courage"

- Henri Matisse

The majority of people will recognise the name when you mention Henri Matisse. They will probably know that he was an artist, a painter. But I wonder how many would know that some of his most famous works, and my favourites, were created using paper.

In his latter years Matisse had started creating cut paper collages called gouaches découpés. While this was due mainly to his ill health  the work he created in this time was no less inspired for it. Icarus (below) featured in Matisse's 1947 book Jazz. Jazz was a collection of these gouaches découpés works along with Matisse's writings.

A Pochoir print of Matisse's called Polynesia. Pochoir is a term used when refering to prints done using a stencil technique.

“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”
― Henri Matisse

 Project for "The Strana Forandola" gouache and cut out paper  1938

One of his Blue Nudes

xx V

Craft Tutorial 2: How to make a string tie envelope.

Update to String Tie Envelope Tutorial 

You can now find the tutorial at our new blog 

Link to the new blog post here 

A little bit of me...

 
Just before Christmas I launched a new product line, my hand covered pencil sets, and they were so popular that they are here to stay. Here are some of the fruits of my labours...

Map of Ireland

Spiderman and the Falcon

Beano Comic Book Pencils

Superhero Comic Book Pencils

Superman and Batman Pencils

Beano Comic Book Pencils

I think the next design will be a literary range.Shakespeare's plays me thinks. Watch this space.

All pencils available on my Etsy shop.

xx V

Dream Job

The making-of Video for the Times+ Subscription, 2011 from Su Blackwell on Vimeo.

 I want their jobs, not that I don't love mine, but I want this one as well.

Wrapping it up

 There really is nothing like getting a beautifully gift wrapped present. What's even better is when its not shop bought but has that delicious home made feel to it.

Woven paper gift wrap from minieco. It even comes with a tutorial, so no excuses.

 I'm a big fan of this one, using old pattern paper. You can underlay it with coloured tissue paper for varying effects. There are always old patterns for sale on ebay or at car boot sales.
via piajanebjikerk

 

Use old maps, even the ones you pick up in tourist offices when you're on holiday.

found via simplified bee

Old newspapers, and make your own bows too...

This tutorial via papernstitch is as always fab link here

And then came beer

I do love my stop frame animations. I'm also 99% sure that's what they're called.

The latest to add to my clever advertisements corner is this Pilsner advert. Watch the actual ad below and then check out the behind the scenes video below it. And I dare you not to want to watch the first one again. The attention to detail and the time and consideration that goes into literally every second of the process is just incredible.

Above video courtesy of Su Blackwell. Paper Artist extroardinaire.

B is for Bianca

Bianca Chang is an Australian based paper artist who creates these amazingly intricate 3D paper letter sculptures. I love incredible detail to them and that they are all cut by hand.

Detail below

Her website has a video (below) that shows you the process, pretty cool me thinks. 

 

And in case you are at this point going - dude she uses a lot of  paper, well you'de be right. But its all 100% recycled and Chang says that she chose photocopy paper as it 

 "has an archival lifespan of 200 years yet it is treated as a highly disposable material - printed on then thrown away. I craft my sculptures from layers of 80gsm photocopy paper with the intention of transforming a typically consumable medium into a long term piece of art."

A simple idea, beautifully executed.

Comic dogs

Yes I know the pun was weak, but seriously who could resist. They're paper mache dogs covered in old Beano comics. Get it?

 

They are the work of Justine Smith. Her more recent work tends towards the more monetary in subject. She creates sculptures out of currency. Her dogs are still my favourite pieces by her, but I do like her money flowers, subtly done, at first glance the material is not apparent. She gets her point across but doesn't hit you over the head with it. 

Tuesday loves ...paper

Yesterday was a rain day. The equivalent of a snow day but not as much fun. So apologies for the lack of content.

So back to today... paper.
Ts'ai Lun, a Chinese courtier is generally credited with the invention of paper. There is evidence that his paper may not have been the first but clever man that he was he got noticed enough that he is the first recorded papermaker. I could go on about the whole paper making process all day but I'll stop myself here. Suffice is to say that when he first came up with the idea over 2000 years ago I doubt he foresaw the lengths to which it would be stretched in the name of art. 

The backdrop of this Bergdorf Goodman window display is a piece of art in itself. Of course that's the entire point of the exercise. To draw in and entice the customer, to lift the shopping experience above the mundane.  Its also a feat of engineering or a lot of superglue.

The giant telephone in the background is made entirely from paper

 

As is the film themed display below and the giant lobster

Molo, a Canadian design company, is one company with paper very much at its core. Its an offshoot of Forsythe and McAllen a small architecture firm in Vancouver. They design a range of products made entirely from paper, but strong enough to be used as seating

 

Softseating (above)

Urchin softlight. You can see a video on youtube here of how it works. Its an incredibly simple but very clever design.

 The softwall, again made from paper, comes in a few different forms.Above is the natural undyed paper wall.

 

 Here an integrated flexible LED lighting strip turns the wall into a luminous object.

You can see the honeycomb structure of the softwall  above. From what I can see there are some limitations, for one, you would never have straight walls in your house. The softwall appears to always need to be curved. Not that I'm saying that is necessarily a bad thing.

But all in all Molo have created not only functional products but beautiful pieces of art too. And they even manage to be environmentally friendly along the way. 50% of the raw material is from recycled fibre and the end product is 100% recyclable.

Of course Molo aren't the first designers to make furniture from something other than timber.

Frank Gehry created the Wiggle Chair in the 1970's, made entirely from corrugated cardboard. And since then there have been copious copies both good and bad.

Peter Calleson is another paper fan who I just recently discovered. Frankly I found it really hard to select just a few images to show you. So here are some of my favourites from his A4 papercuts (all made using one sheet of A4 paper).

Angel 2006

The short distance between time and shadow

Cradle (above)

Do not enter

He also does works on a larger scale, some are replicates of his smaller works.

Alive but Dead (above)

White Diary - made from an A5 notebook

A detail from White Diary

For me the most beautiful parts of these sculptures are the details, when you look closely the things that are suddenly revealed to you. How he uses the details to comment on the whole. To tell a story beyond just a pretty paper cut out

We've come a long way from beating mulberry bark and bamboo fibres into pulp, but I like to think that along the way we havn't lost our wonder at a simple thing called paper.