. . . made Citra-solv paper

and one hell of a mess yesterday. I am toying with the idea of entering a collage exchange and thought I would try this method of making my own paper, although I already have a huge supply of homemade paper on hand. I guess I was just in an experimental mood while I waited for paint to dry on the art piece I worked on yesterday.






I had read about this method of creating paper but never tried it before. I had the Citra-Solv and I had a National Geographic magazine (supposedly the only magazine that works) and it sounded easy so I took a plastic trash bag outside, put the National Geographic in the center of it, and sprayed Citra-Solv between all the pages. Then I shut the magazine, smooshed all the solvent that was seeping out of it into the center of the trash bag, rolled it up and let it sit outside overnight.




Oops, a mistake, I showed this one twice. . . sorry

When I picked up my mail yesterday afternoon, I found a Nordstrom's catalog. The quality of the paper struck me as having potential for this method, so I tried it, and it works, too. I have read that the reason only certain magazines work has something to do with the paper they use . . . NG uses a clay-covered paper. There is a lot of black ink in both of these publications, so you end up with a lot of liquid black ink all over everything include most of the pages. The seeping ink from the Nordstrom's catalog was purple, however. Instead of smooshing it in with the catalog, I soaked up the excess with two layers of tissue paper and ended up with a pretty piece of paper (not shown here.)






Apparently this method also works with turpentine. However, I hate to use anything that's even slightly flammable. . . I have a fear of blowing up the house, or getting it on myself and becoming a human torch. I think I mentioned before that I accidentally found out Citra-Solv will eat through styrofoam, leaving interesting shapes and marks. Although it is supposed to be "green", it is very strong, but it doesn't smell bad. Do this outside, definitely. The Nordstrom's catalog gave me a headache. Also, be warned, your hands will be black from paging through the soaked papers. . . maybe gloves would be a good idea. The ink washes right off with soap and water, though.






And, finally, I will say these papers look much better on the computer than they do in actuality. I definitely have tweaked them as to color and contrast. But that's okay, because I can use them off the computer (as backgrounds for collages or just printing out the edited photos) as well as I can use the actual pages. Will I do this experiment again? Probably not, unless I just want to play around. But experimentation is always useful, I think. . .