August, 2015 Workshop - Surface Design

On Saturday, August 8, Carolyn Jones invited us into her home for a Surface Design play day presented by Terri Tinkham, Vikki Young, and herself. We were told to bring aprons and gloves, but you would be surprised at how many of us were so excited to start that we left our gloves and aprons in our totes. 

Before starting, we had a quick tour through the stations. We received a handout that gave us the general instructions and what materials were used. After that, our goal was to play with all of the surface design options.

• String Printing – a string was saturated with paint, put between two pieces of paper, weight applied and then the string was pulled out quickly to leave behind trails of paint.

• Wax Paper Prints – acrylic paints were applied directly to waxed paper and a monoprint was made.

Miriam H. displays both string and waxed paper prints.

• Smoke Printing – a lit candle was used to deposit smoke on paper. A fixative was then applied to set the smoke.

•  Bubble Printing – a water bath with dye and a bit of detergent was agitated with a straw and then paper was laid on the bubbles for a print.

  

Michele K. is under the hat stirring up the bubbles.

• Suminagashi - Japanese inks are floated on water and printed to a paper laid directly on the surface.

 

Suminagashi print

  Crystalline Paper – Gel medium is applied to tissue papers either as a single layer or using multiple tissues making a collage.

 

Crystalline paper on the left just has gel medium on it.  When dry, the tissue paper is considerably stronger. On the right, gel medium is use to collage other papers to the base tissue paper.

•  Direct prints – apply acrylic paint to one side of an object, turn over, cover, and roll over with a brayer.

•  Rubbings – lay a piece of paper on a textured object and rub a crayon or colored pencil over the surface.

  

• Encaustic - melt 2 or more colors of crayon on an iron and then transfer to paper.

First we applied colored wax to the iron and then applied to paper.

•  Paste Paper – using a paste that has been colored with acrylics, coat paper and make designs using various tools.

Michele K. is at the paste paper table. The following photos show some of the paste papers drying.

•  Brayer Printing – wrap a brayer with textured items, apply inks or acrylics and roll on paper to print.

For the business part of the workshop there were twelve books for the exchange theme of "Book Game" (a book that's a game).

We also received a delightful gift of letters cut from discarded books which spelled NORBAG from Carol Stallard, her husband Butch, and Bonnie Julien.

It was Carol's idea that the letters be given to celebrate NORBAG's 20th anniversary. Her suggestion was for them to be used for exhibits etc. They started collecting various books almost a year ago.  Part of the fun was finding covers that reflected the letter in some way. It was a team effort. Bonnie traced the letters onto the books, Carol cut them on the band saw, Butch did the interior cuttings of the A, B, R, etc. with a scroll saw, and Bonnie did the finish sanding. Carol added the little tree (that was made during one of their play dates with Randi Parkhurst) in the middle of the O. Bonnie added a mini book made from old NORBAG newsletters to be placed inside the G. 

Don't forget to look at the exchange books on our Flickr page.  They will be up by the end of the month.