As some of you know, I belong to a writing group.
What does our writing group do? We write. We critique. And sometimes we play. A few of us have taken to having regular "art therapy" sessions where we spend a whole day doing art, talking writing and sometimes sharing wine–and chocolate.
As artists, we fully believe we need to feed our souls.
Our most recent sessions involved making "paste paper", an activity I first saw when I discovered this short video about artist Paulus Berensohn. It's aptly titled, "Soul's Kitchen". Seriously, go watch this. I watch it over and over. I love this man.
In fact, I was so intrigued with the video and what Mr. Berensohn does that I decided to try track him down. I wanted to find out a little more about his journal making workshops and whether he had any advice for me. I knew he lived too far away for me to attend but I hoped he'd be able to tell me where to go for help.
Well, it turns out I did manage to track him down and immediately sent off an email. I wasn't sure he'd respond, partly because I'd been told he had some health problems but he did respond almost immediately. He offered some words of advice and instruction on making paste paper and he sent along his recipe.
I'd already shown some of my writer friends the video so we had already talked about trying to make our own paste paper. So with a recipe in hand right from a master, we got our supplies and set to work.
Here's the result of our first session:
Here's Rhea mixing up some green paste. Our initial paste is in that pot. It's made up of things like glycerin and gesso along with a thickening agent.
Once the paste had thickened and cooled, we began to colour small bits with acrylic paint. I happened to have a container of various paint colours hanging around though it seemed like we ended up with quite a bit of pink and orange!
Here's some of our materials we used…foam brushes, sponges, empty margarine dishes (we decided yogurt containers would be a perfect size in the future) and water.
I covered the table with plastic too. Our original plan was to do this outside but it was just a tad too cool on this day.
Here's Elizabeth getting creative. She tried some stamping. We tried masking as well. We left some areas with thicker paste than others.
And we got messy! That's me smooshing colours around together. I spread various colours onto a page, then put another page on top and "smooshed". It's pretty loud but might look good as a book cover. You think?
We used stamps, combs and other materials to texturize and add designs to the paste which we applied to 90 lb. drawing paper. We used 70 lb. paper too but much preferred the results with the heavier paper.
And then we hung each sheet out to dry. Aren't they pretty?
I love that photo!
Later, as darkness neared, we spread some out on the table to dry overnight.
We were like a bunch of kids. I think you could compare it to finger painting. It was that fun!
But wait. It got even better…
A few weeks later, Elizabeth and I got together to make some journals with our paper. We're both already experienced at making books so we were pretty excited to give this a go.
Here's a look at that session:
In the photo above, Elizabeth is starting to stitch her final cover onto her journal.
To start, we folded our pages into signatures to the desired size.
We covered chipboard with our paste paper, using glue and scor-tape.
You all KNOW how much I love scor-tape. I recommend it to everyone. It works so much better than glue and I sometimes worry about glue drying out at some point…so scor-tape is definitely my go-to adhesive. I always keep it in stock too!
There's a bit of a knack to holding everything together tightly enough when you sew so that it doesn't wobble loosely when you're done. But really, it's not that difficult.
You could use this paper to cover any kind of book cover if you're not so much into the sewing thing. It would be great for scrapbook covers too.
There's me sewing a small book together. The blue turned out to be pretty cool too.
After punching holes through the signatures and book covers, we simply ran crochet cotton through paraffin wax though I much prefer waxed book-binding thread. (Note to self: find somewhere to order that!). You can find directions for coptic binding online.
And look! That's Elizabeth's book on the left (see the stamped images) and mine on the right. I used something to create designs in the paint. (Maybe a pen?)
Here's another look at the two books. These journals measure about 8" x 10". They're a great size!.But next time we want to get bigger sheets of paper so we can go a bit bigger yet!
Here's another one Elizabeth made. The size is probably about 4" x 9". It's a fun size too.
I wanted my second one to be purse size. I like carrying a little book in my purse and this one will be perfect. It measures about 3" x 4". It's so pretty I hate to use it but I have to keep reminding myself that, not only do I have more paste paper ready to use to create a book, I can make MORE anytime!
Look at how gorgeous that coptic binding is.
And there's my two journals again.
This paper was so nice to work with too. I can't wait to do it again. I'm seriously thinking this needs to be a workshop. It would have to be a two-day workshop, perhaps two mornings? The paper needs to dry overnight.
Now, seriously. Who wouldn't LOVE to try this? And who wouldn't love to have their own journals? You could use them for journalling, art, doodling, recipes or give them away as gifts.
By the way, if you want to know a little more about what happens at "art therapy", read my friend Elizabeth's story that appeared in the Sault Star here.
And then tell me what you think about our paste paper.