Crazy Paper
by Robin Moore
Collage Artist and Teacher

To make the Crazy Paper, I lay out a piece of freezer paper, shiny side up, and dilute some Elmer's glue with just a little bit of water (this process eats up a lot of glue!). I start by laying down torn bits of paper to make a base, and then add fiber, fabric, paper, punch-outs, just about anything. I generally do another layer of paper pieces on top of this, and then some more of the small scraps. The key to the process is to really, really encase everything with the glue. When the whole thing is dry, it will peel right off the freezer paper. I like to give the finished piece a coat of spray varnish; it enhances the colors and ties everything together.

I actually keep several plastic containers in my work area, and throw all my scraps in the appropriate color-coded container. Can you say OBSESSIVE, lol? The next thing I want to try is to put the scraps into handmade paper pulp and see what happens.

The finished papers can be cut - and for this, I find that a rotary cutter works better than a craft knife. Depending on how many layers you do, they can be almost like a thin piece of vinyl. They are very sturdy but flexible. If you tear them, you get interesting effects where the different fibers hang out.

What to do with them:

Cut into squares for serendipity cards
Art doll adornament (as you mentioned)
Cut into squares and mount on atc's
They make FaBuLouS roll-up beads!
Use torn pieces to create imaginery landscapes
Use in collage
Can anyone think of anything else?

And that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about Crazy Paper - cheers - Robin

Below is an example of a variation of crazy paper using the encaustic technique  I used all my leftover scraps of paper, fiber, fabric etc. and glued them all together on the freezer paper. When they dried, I peeled the new "paper" off. I now have an 8" x 10" piece of CP that I made with mostly red, black, and gold scraps. I started out by melting some gold and clear wax and smoothing it onto the CP with the iron, then used some of the pearlescent white wax. The wax really caught the texture of the paper, and the fiber especially made the wax puddle in interesting patterns. I really wish the scan would show all the dimension! I don't know yet what I'll use it for, guess it will have to speak to me and tell me what it wants to be!

 

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Last revised: April 09, 2006.
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