My Art - Handmade Paper Cards

Handmade paper cards!! These are a project I am doing with a school in the area where the students get exposed to a variety of art and crafts! In the first 45 minute session we made the blue paper sheets and laminated the images to a sheet of white handmade paper. The second day we made the cards with the blue paper - just folded them in half, ripped apart the images on the white one and watercoloured them. The images were hot glued to the front of the blue handmade paper cards. Inserts were glued inside and they made envelopes for them using a quick and easy template by Green Sneakers that utilizes a square of paper.

The blue handmade paper is recycled white bond paper - used and printed. I added some blue construction paper for colour. The last blender full I only blended slightly so there would be some larger bits that would show up as accents in the paper. I also added some herbal tea (used) and some blue flower botanicals that were slightly blended as well.

The white handmade paper is also from used bond paper. I rip off any white areas in my sheets when I am setting paper aside for papermaking in a separate box so I have the ability to make plain white paper with no black bits. I also save all of my white paper and cardstock scraps in the same box.

The images are stamped on tissue paper with waterproof Memories ink and laminated to the wet sheet! They look like part of the paper. Some of the edges lifted a bit while we were watercolouring them so we just applied a bit of glue behind the tissue paper image laid them back down. Good as new. The dragonfly and leaf are silver embossed. The effect was not quite what I had envisioned. The embossing powder was too shiny and reflects too much light which is not enough contrast for the watercolour. Live and learn. I have in the past also laminated embossed greetings into my handmade paper cards which works very well. In this case we used white tissue paper on white handmade paper.

It was great to get my hands in paper again and the students enjoyed the process and the results.

Happy Valentine's Day!! I am celebrating on the weekend with a great meals cooked at home with my DH!

Therese