More Paper

Today was my second day of

paper making at Brenau.

We were learning to add things to our handmade paper,

such as the flowers shown above.

I picked those from my garden yesterday,

pressed them in a large book overnight,

and then captured them in my paper this morning.

(The horizontal white rectangle that appears about 3/4 way 

up my paper is a piece of masking tape on the plastic

sheet beneath my paper - it is not part of my paper!)

The process is really fun,

but not quite as easy as we all thought it would be.

Below is our instructor, Claudia Wilburn,

demonstrating how to 'hog the bath' 

with the flower petals included.

She has just removed her frame and screens

from the bath:

Below she has demonstrated how to make

two thin sheets and sandwich the petals between them.

(that is what I did in the first photo I showed you at the top)

Here is one in which I added dye:

I'm not pleased with the results -

but the paper was still wet when I photographed it,

so perhaps after it has dried it will look a bit better.

I didn't want to add the dye to the bath,

because not everyone wanted dye,

so I dropped it onto my paper.

Perhaps I could have spread it a bit with a sponge brush -

but I did not have one.

Below is another sheet with inks added (yellow).

When I pressed my papers with the paper press,

some of the red went through my sheets -

interesting!

Below are a few more of my sheets.

lovely dried flower inclusions,

above and below

below are more larkspur blossoms from my garden

and a wonderful dried grape hyacinth blossom

from our patio

 This is one of our drying tables
with some of my classmates' wonderful sheets:

 This is a single sheet that I made 

with a colorful Nandina branch from our patio:

And one last sheet with dried flower inclusions:

This class is a 4-day, 2-week class,

and unfortunately I will be missing next week's classes.

I say that, but wait till you hear about next week!

I am heading up to Arrowmont 

to take a weeklong workshop with Elin Noble!

YeeHaw!!

I am very excited about that!!

thanks for popping in!

PEACE TO YOU!