Further experiments with PVA

Well, the Spider-Man cape was not as cool as the Talking Megatron from his cousins, but I've moved on.

I rescued some pages of memory dumps from the Unwanted Printout Pile at work on Friday. I have about three reams of Unwanted Printouts, but very little of it is this interesting. Maybe I should have used the boring stuff to experiment...

They make fairly boring paper fabric:












After cutting out some bits and realizing they were quite fun except for the black-on-white, color experiments.

Watercolor pencils brushed with water before PVA:






Watercolor pencils smeared only by watered-down PVA:

















No pencil, only a single drop of fluid acrylic mixed with the PVA:














I probably could have used two or three drops.

Work in Progress?

I decided I hated the fake "Carolina Lily" on my paper fabric, and they peeled right off.





Tulips, much better. The Brewers are 5-1 after a week; I really enjoy listening to Bob Uecker call the games while I play with fabric.

I have been too busy, making cakes and going to parties.

I do not know where the stitching will go on the flowers.

Work in Progress?

Yesterday I made some additional pieces of paper fabric (same novel, no paint, looks exactly like this) before deciding what the first unpainted piece needed was a modified Carolina Lily.

It's fused down--the PVA gets smooth when you melt it--and I might be able to peel off the fused pieces if I decide I hate it. I might hate the green triangles, they're too big...

I have no idea how or why I embarked on this--maybe because the crappy novel was about people from South Carolina? I don't like primitives or faux folk art, why did I start making some?


Less perplexing is a new sequined piece featuring coffee. The scale doesn't seem right; there's a lot of empty space. I said I wanted to make things bigger than the things I finished last year...

Paper Fabric I

The PVA was fine! Experiment was a success!

Papers used: a 20-year-old crappy historical "romance" novel, shown here unpainted, and a road map of Vermont, painted blue. I skipped the tissue paper step on the blue and unpainted pieces because the tissue paper shredded into little balls when I painted the reddish piece.

I'm not sure if the pages of the novel will continue to yellow, and they're very readable. The tissue paper didn't blur the text of the red, but the acrylic sure did.

The pages are very flexible, too. If I crumpled them into a ball they might stay crumpled, and I might have to poke a few needle holes to attach sequins, but they're about as slick and plastic as polyester satin.

I need some more paint colors.

And some more sources of free paper with appropriate lines and text. I don't get any disposable magazines, waste paper at work might have confidential info on it...if only I'd saved all that algebra homework 20 years ago!!


I don't know what I'll do with these. Maybe nothing