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Paper Casting
Donna Halpern LavenderLady3388@cs.com
I got to thinking about paper casting in molds and got the brainstorm to grab a nice fat sanitary napkin (in the old days we called them Kotex pads, sort of like when we called photocopying xeroxing, but I digress...OK, back on track. Tear the new puppy open and get rid of the plastic film and all and tear the soft cotton stuffing up into three or four inches of water in a bucket. Grab a fine mesh strainer and scoop it up after you have stirred it around and broken up the cotton fibers, stuff it into your flexible mold and squeeze all of the water out until there isn't any left...just as you would if you were doing a normal paper cast. It works great. I made three of them out of one pad and one of the three was quite deep. Quick, easy and instant (well, almost instant) gratification and no dragging out the blender or soaking for hours ahead of time.
I got to thinking about paper casting in molds and got the brainstorm to grab a nice fat sanitary napkin (in the old days we called them Kotex pads, sort of like when we called photocopying xeroxing, but I digress...OK, back on track. Tear the new puppy open and get rid of the plastic film and all and tear the soft cotton stuffing up into three or four inches of water in a bucket. Grab a fine mesh strainer and scoop it up after you have stirred it around and broken up the cotton fibers, stuff it into your flexible mold and squeeze all of the water out until there isn't any left...just as you would if you were doing a normal paper cast. It works great. I made three of them out of one pad and one of the three was quite deep. Quick, easy and instant (well, almost instant) gratification and no dragging out the blender or soaking for hours ahead of time.
Kim Jolley kimjolley@hotmail.com
A couple of tips: Scrap matboard is an inexpensive surface to do art on, but I had always had trouble with warping due to wet mediums. Now I spray the surface (front & back) with 2-3 light coats of matte sealer and it works beautifully. When I do my faux paper casts with TP, I do a couple of things that help me achieve stunning results: after I do the starch/water mixture and lay the tp on the stamp, I brayer it to get all the liquid I can out of it. Then I flip the stamp (with the tp still on it) upside down and lay it on an old towel on the floor. (rubber side is down) I then stand on it for a couple of seconds, this removes any other liquid that is in the paper cast) Then I gently peel the tp off of the stamp and place it on a piece of wax paper in my microwave. It usually takes just under 2 minutes for it to be completely dry. Then I spray with matte sealer 2-3 times, front and back. After that, I paint as usual without the worry of the tp reconstituting. I use very detailed stamps with this method and can even read wording that may have been on the image, the detail is THAT good. I have a piece of art on the vintage section of my website that has paper casts done this way that have been made to look like leather. www.itsmysite.com/kimjolley It is the second piece down, (Man from Cuba) the corner pieces are tp casts.
A couple of tips: Scrap matboard is an inexpensive surface to do art on, but I had always had trouble with warping due to wet mediums. Now I spray the surface (front & back) with 2-3 light coats of matte sealer and it works beautifully. When I do my faux paper casts with TP, I do a couple of things that help me achieve stunning results: after I do the starch/water mixture and lay the tp on the stamp, I brayer it to get all the liquid I can out of it. Then I flip the stamp (with the tp still on it) upside down and lay it on an old towel on the floor. (rubber side is down) I then stand on it for a couple of seconds, this removes any other liquid that is in the paper cast) Then I gently peel the tp off of the stamp and place it on a piece of wax paper in my microwave. It usually takes just under 2 minutes for it to be completely dry. Then I spray with matte sealer 2-3 times, front and back. After that, I paint as usual without the worry of the tp reconstituting. I use very detailed stamps with this method and can even read wording that may have been on the image, the detail is THAT good. I have a piece of art on the vintage section of my website that has paper casts done this way that have been made to look like leather. www.itsmysite.com/kimjolley It is the second piece down, (Man from Cuba) the corner pieces are tp casts.
kate katep@norfolk.infi.net
What a lucky find! Twelve casting designs for only a dollar! There are several ways to do paper casting. This is the easiest one for me. Take a pad of 110 weight watercolor paper pad and tear out a half sheet of paper. Tear this up and shred in your blender with 4 cups of water for 30 seconds. Then put this in a large bowl. (I use a NEW kitty litter pan.) Spray your clay design LIGHTLY with Pam or other spray oil. Then take a strainer and strain out a glom of the paper pulp and let it drain for about 10 seconds. Scoop this out and press into your mold. Then take a clean sponge or paper towel wad and press the pulp into your mold. This will remove the excess water and make the design crisper in the final product. I have found that the faster the casting drys the better the detail. I put the castings in the clay out in the sun on the deck on sunny days. They dry in one or two days. Then take a butter knife and gently pry them out. Since they are made from watercolor paper they are very absorbant so if you use marvies on them they will bleed. I use glitter glue or spray paint. Another tip is that if yours are too fragile and tend to fall apart you can use a squirt of white glue in your paper pulp before you put it in the mold. There is a nice professional papercasting site on the net. http://www.42.com/crafts/index.html
What a lucky find! Twelve casting designs for only a dollar! There are several ways to do paper casting. This is the easiest one for me. Take a pad of 110 weight watercolor paper pad and tear out a half sheet of paper. Tear this up and shred in your blender with 4 cups of water for 30 seconds. Then put this in a large bowl. (I use a NEW kitty litter pan.) Spray your clay design LIGHTLY with Pam or other spray oil. Then take a strainer and strain out a glom of the paper pulp and let it drain for about 10 seconds. Scoop this out and press into your mold. Then take a clean sponge or paper towel wad and press the pulp into your mold. This will remove the excess water and make the design crisper in the final product. I have found that the faster the casting drys the better the detail. I put the castings in the clay out in the sun on the deck on sunny days. They dry in one or two days. Then take a butter knife and gently pry them out. Since they are made from watercolor paper they are very absorbant so if you use marvies on them they will bleed. I use glitter glue or spray paint. Another tip is that if yours are too fragile and tend to fall apart you can use a squirt of white glue in your paper pulp before you put it in the mold. There is a nice professional papercasting site on the net. http://www.42.com/crafts/index.html
Ann Graham barbiec@ebicom.net
What do you do with those neat paper casting things? You can mount them on colored matte board or paper and frame them with an oval or square matte, etc. If you buy unfinished frames, you can paint them with any color of acrylic paint (ie. those small bottles of paint -Delta, Decoart, etc) >to match or contrast with the matte board. You can embellish them with little ribbon bows, dried flowers, those little brass charms, etc before you frame them. You can also make cards with them - glue them onto cardstock or blank cards. Or you can add ribbons and embellishments to them and add a ribbon to hang them - they can hang on little shelf pegs or you can put Chrismas things on them and use them for Christmas ornaments. You can also put them on wreaths and add dried flowers, raffia, ribbons, etc.
What do you do with those neat paper casting things? You can mount them on colored matte board or paper and frame them with an oval or square matte, etc. If you buy unfinished frames, you can paint them with any color of acrylic paint (ie. those small bottles of paint -Delta, Decoart, etc) >to match or contrast with the matte board. You can embellish them with little ribbon bows, dried flowers, those little brass charms, etc before you frame them. You can also make cards with them - glue them onto cardstock or blank cards. Or you can add ribbons and embellishments to them and add a ribbon to hang them - they can hang on little shelf pegs or you can put Chrismas things on them and use them for Christmas ornaments. You can also put them on wreaths and add dried flowers, raffia, ribbons, etc.
Feathers feathersmc@juno.com
I had just gotten my first cookie press from Walmart and wanted to see how it worked and wanted to see it now! But wasn't in any position to go and rip up paper and blend it and yada yada. So I thunk for a minute about what to do, and then went and unrolled a goodly length of good old cheap (we buy it by the case at Sams) TP! Soaked it in a bowl of water briefly - the stuff pretty much falls apart on its own with a very small amount of encouragement, strained it and did the paper cast thing. Son of a gun but that stuff worked good! It dried crisp and nice and shows off the image well. The finished cast is good and sturdy and solid. I made another with a bit of coffee added to the soak water and got an interesting splotchy effect when it dried. I am definitely going to use good old white TP for my small castings from now on.
I had just gotten my first cookie press from Walmart and wanted to see how it worked and wanted to see it now! But wasn't in any position to go and rip up paper and blend it and yada yada. So I thunk for a minute about what to do, and then went and unrolled a goodly length of good old cheap (we buy it by the case at Sams
For information on related topics see:
Tutorials: Faux Paper Casting
Tutorials: Faux Paper Casting