Paper Continued

Following on from my last blog post I will show the progress of my paper making, and it isn't going well.
This is an image of my first attempt of making paper;

 

As you can see it has fallen apart, I think that the main error was that I didn't tear the paper up small emough, even though I soaked the paper for a long time.

 

These are my shredded newspaper samples:

 

                        

The top image is a sample made just of newspaper, and the bottom image has a bit of the pulp mixed in with it. These newspaper samples seem to be knitted together quite well, and once they are dry I think they will hold together quite well. You can't see any glitter in the samples yet, but I will inspect then once they are dry.

This is my tissue paper sample:

 

 

This sample is now dry. As you can see the blue pigment has dried quite a bit lighter than the colour it was when wet. This shows I need to use a lot more pigment for a brighter colour, something to bear in mind for next time. The tissue paper seems to have worked really well as a whole, the paper itself has held together really well, probably due to the thinness of the original tissue and the absorbancy.

 

 

I have prepped some more of the pulp that came with my paper making kit, here is an image:

 

 

I took a lot longer this time ensuring that the paper was shredded finely and poured boiling water instead of warm water to soak it in. I am going to leave that for a few hours, maybe even over night and then will add some pigments and maybe even some sequins or glitter to the mixture. Aready it looks like it may work better than my first attempt, and if so I will experiemnt with the original pulp some more.

 

After this experimentation I have come to the conclusion that paper making is not my strongest practice, however practice does makes perfect. These samples don't relate to my theme but I am hoping to produce some that do link to my work once I have found the best technique for paper making. 

 



Whilst taking this photograph I noticed the quality of shadow in the image. I took a photograph of just the shadow:

 

 

Although there is not an element of opposite in small proportion that I am looking at, I thought that the shadow looked very interesting. The three "shades" of colour in the shadow work well together and I was thinking that I could try manipulating this image in photoshop..