Helen Hiebert's Blog, page 50
December 10, 2016
December Flowers
The Sunday Paper #137, December 11, 2016
Since it’s Sunday, this is a double-feature. The regular Sunday Paper appears at the bottom of this post.
25 Days of Paper 2016, Day 11
The May project in the Twelve Months of Paper calendar is this swirling flower, created with a thai momi marbled paper that really makes it swirl! You can find this paper through retail shops listed here.
When I was working on this design, I found a small wooden spool in my studio and got the idea of having that be a center for the flower… you can screw the spool into the wall and then attach the flower to it. I made a little video showing how this works.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. Receive updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
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And here’s your Sunday Paper, in a slightly different order.
I love the work of Ann Hamilton and recently stumbled across this older book project of hers, called lineament • book/ball.
Melanie Mowinski has a lovely contemplative blog that features a collage-a-day during the advent season. This year, she’s inviting us to make a collage too by providing prompts. Click here to view a recent assignment. And here’s her first post of the season.
Wow, these are some amazing pleated sculptures by Goran Konjevod!
May Babcock has a wonderful blog about handmade paper called Paper Slurry. This week she profiled an innovative paper studio called Fresh Presh. Read all about it!
ExSpelled is a magical paper craft game in the form of a video game that was recently funded on Kickstarter. Can’t afford “fancy” magic schools? Born to non-magical parents? You’re welcome at Whimberly’s College for the Magical Arts! Scroll down at the link to watch the video.
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In the Studio:
There’s a new podcast on Paper Talk. I had the pleasure of meeting Simon Barcham Green this fall, whose family began in the papermaking business in the 1800’s in England. Have a listen!
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If you read this blog regularly, would you consider making a donation to support the research, writing, design and delivery of The Sunday Paper? Click on the paper button at the left (I made that paper) to see how you can provide support.
And if you run a paper-related business, you might be interested in promoting your business in The Sunday Paper.
Thanks again to those of you who have pledged your support, and enjoy your Sunday!
December 9, 2016
Washi Arts
Japanese washi / paper is renowned for it’s purity, elegance and strength. Small format handmade sheets are delightful to work with and make wonderful pages for artists’ books, and are exquisite for printmaking (particularly lino and woodblock prints), as well as letterpress and monoprints. The long fibers are wonderful for absorbing and reflecting wax encaustic and sumi inks. Pure-fibered Japanese papers are beautifully receptive to all media including ink, watercolor, graphite and pastel.
Try a range of these papers – select a few to try or as a special for readers of this blog, order one of each at a special price. These small sheets range in price from $3.00 to $8.00. To honor this season of celebration and creativity Washi Arts is offering a twenty percent discount on orders placed through December 24th. Use the code hiebertholiday2016 at checkout. You can also purchase Gift Certificates at this special price – give more for less.
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About our Sponsor: Washi Arts sole focus is high quality Japanese papers. There is a large assortment of natural and conservation quality Japanese washi /paper, decorative papers – katazome-shi, chiyogami, chirimen, marbled kozo washi and kozo paste papers – as well as tools and supplies for working with Japanese washi / paper.
Linda Marshall, proprietor of Washi Arts and retail partner of the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto has just returned from a trip to Japan to visit hand papermakers and print studios and will be chronicling the journey on the blog and via newsletter. If you are interested in learning about the process of crafting Japanese washi and decorative papers, and learning about the state of papermaking in Japan, please join the mailing list on the home page of the website at www.washiarts.com
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. If you’d like more info about the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar, click here. Receive these blog updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 8, 2016
More Paper Lights
Woven Paper Lanterns created during one of my workshops
The April project in the Twelve Months of Paper calendar features a paper weaving that can be displayed as a wall or window hanging or a lantern. See those little cut-outs? There’s a simple trick to making those, and when these lanterns are illuminated, those little shapes allow the light to shine brighter.
There’s a clever hinge (if I do say so myself) that can be used to hang the piece or connect the two ends to form the cylindrical lantern.
The two papers used in this project are Japanese. The green paper is a called Mingei and it comes in a variety of colors. Mingei is a laminated paper – used in Japan for book covers – it is nice to the touch and flexible. The top layer is kozo– which is why the colors are so intense – and the bottom layer is wood pulp. The yellow paper is Tatami, also available in a variety of colors. Both papers can be purchased through Washi Arts.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. If you’d like more info about the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar, click here. Receive these blog updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 7, 2016
Oblation Papers & Press
Oblation Papers & Press is an urban paper mill, letterpress print shop and old-world paper boutique in Portland, Oregon, whose studios are on view for those who visit their shop in the Pearl District.
At Oblation Papers & Press, paper is made by hand every day. Recycled cotton fibers from the garment industry are pulled from the vat with moulds and deckles of various shapes and sizes, then letterpress printed, before making their way out into the hands of those who love the textures and rough edges of tangible things.
Oblation Papers & Press is offering a free letterpress printed ‘Merry Christmas’ handmade paper tree card with every online purchase through December 15th.
It is easy to get lost in the pages of the gorgeous website! Here are a few treasures that I discovered, but there are many, many more!
I love the line of blind embossed white handmade paper salutations.
Check out these sweet 5.75 x 7.75 inch journals printed letterpress on cream handmade paper cover with a deckled edge and Japanese stab-bound (100 lined pages).
Grab a few of these unique seed paper thank you notes printed one-color letterpress on plantable handmade seed paper with deckled edges.
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About our sponsor: Oblation Papers & Press is an urban paper mill, letterpress print shop and old-world paper boutique in Portland, Oregon. They also offer their work in wholesale exhibitions in New York, Tokyo and Paris. Follow Oblation Papers & Press on Instagram.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. If you’d like more info about the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar, click here. Receive these blog updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 6, 2016
Pleated Paper
If you haven’t noticed, I have a fascination with paper manipulation. So when I stumbled across a book called The Art of Manipulating Fabric, I poured over it looking for techniques that might translate into paper. If this is of interest to you too, you might want to look up the work of Jocelyn Chateauvert, a self proclaimed “paper wrangler” who has been manipulating wet handmade sheets for years. Her artwork is stunning!
The March project in the Twelve Months of Paper calendar features a pleated lantern. Another passion of mine is figuring out how to create something from one sheet of paper (one day I’m going to put together a book of one-sheet wonders).
So you see, this lantern is created from a manipulated sheet of 8-1/2 x 11″ sheet of paper. Pleating is just a step beyond an accordion fold. And BTW, this paper is called tatami, is one of my new favorite papers and is available from Washi Arts. I like it because it is thin, strong, translucent, and simply elegant.
Here you see the smushing of the pleats in action… it isn’t the prettiest or simplest, but the results are pretty fabulous.
This is a behind-the-scenes image from the photo shoot we did for the calendar (special thanks to my summer interns Tracy Norman and Eden Marek).
And I don’t think I’ve shown you the little tea lights that I enjoy using to illuminate this type of lantern. These are battery-operated LED tea lights. And here’s a fun fact – in searching for this image, I’ve realized that they are available at Home Depot. I’ve been ordering them on-line but now have a quicker and simpler source!
Here are the lanterns aglow. Notice that the green and blue ones are merely pleated horizontally, while the yellow and orange ones have an added diagonal dimension.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. If you’d like more info about the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar, click here. Receive these blog updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 5, 2016
Arnold Grummer’s
What does Zig Zag mean to you? The first thought that comes to my mind is Charlie Brown’s shirt! But in this case, it’s the clever name of Arnold Grummer’s accordion – aka Zig Zag books. These come in 12-packs (perfect for classes) and contain six-panel, pre-folded heavyweight paper inserts and thick chipboard covers with clear instructions. This is the July project in the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar. All you have to supply is the decorative paper for the covers (unless you have the custom paper pack which contains a decorative Japanese paper).
Arnold Grummer’s is offering blog readers 10% off regular and sale priced items thru 12/31/16, including Annual Press Sale items with coupon code HH10 at checkout.
I’ve used Arnold Grummer’s Mini Zig-Zag Book in workshops and it was so fun to see the variety of papers participants chose for their covers, and we used them as journals throughout the weekend. The mini Zig Zags are perfect for small (wallet size) photos, Artist Trading Cards or any little book idea. The Zig Zags come in several sizes for other book projects, such as travel journals.
Be sure to take a peek at the other book, card, papercraft and papermaking supplies that Arnold Grummer’s has to offer!
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About our sponsor: Arnold Grummer’s Papermaking is celebrating 40 years of service to the education, art and hand papermaking communities. They continue their dedication to quality supplies and clear instruction to ensure success at home, in the studio, and in the classroom.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. Receive updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 4, 2016
Hanging Heart
Here’s a bit about February’s project in the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar. This is a simple structure made from multiple pages cut to the same shape and size. I love thinking up variations – how about trying multiple shapes and sizes?!
This hanging heart is an ornament created with an embossed paper from Shizen Design. These papers are imported from India (they are handmade cotton papers, and most of their papers are more colorful screen printed designs). They are carried by many retail shops in the US (check out the large selection here).
The ornaments are great for hanging (and obviously the heart-shape can only hang – since it can’t stand on its point) but if your design has a flat bottom, you can just set it on a flat surface. This tree was made from a mail-order catalog. The staples are still in the center. Other than that, all I had to do was cut the tree shape!
And then I got carried away. Double-sided origami paper works really well for these forms too.
Below you see them before they are unfolded.
I’m sure that you’ll have more ideas, and I hope you’ll share them with us!
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. Receive updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 3, 2016
Paper Connection International
The Sunday Paper #136, December 4, 2016
Since it’s Sunday, this is a double-feature. The regular Sunday Paper appears at the bottom of this post.
25 Days of Paper 2016, Day 4There are a handful of companies that bring unique papers to us from around the world. For more than two decades, Paper Connection has been sourcing fine art papers, mostly from Asia.
Mainly recognized as a leading source of washi – Japanese paper, Paper Connection also maintains a large variety of specialty papers from places like: China, India, Korea, Nepal, The Philippines and Mexico.
The majority of the stocked papers are made using traditional methods and employ recycled or sustainable fibers, such as the cultivated paper mulberry of Japan, the Himalayan daphne plant, which grows wild in the mountains, or recycled cotton rag used in India to make paper goods.
Here is a taste of Paper Connection’s Mino Washi collection, made in Gifu Prefecture, Japan: as seen in The Twelve Months of Paper calendar. These papers are not only great for making mobiles, they are all inkjet compatible!
As a special thank you to blog readers, coupon code MINO10 is available for an extra 10% off all papers and products in Paper Connection’s online shop, now through December 31, 2016.
You can follow PCI on Facebook and their blog to find out what’s new in the world of handmade paper, and discussions with the artists who use them.
About our sponsor: For over two decades Paper Connection International, LLC has been providing both plain and decorative specialty papers to art suppliers, art educators, paper artists, designers and manufacturers. Through import, distribution, and education, founder Lauren Pearlman Sugita and her staff remain committed to the preservation of traditional hand papermaking and the papermakers themselves, ensuring there will be good quality paper for future generations.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. Receive updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
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And here’s your Sunday Paper, in a slightly different order.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are combined in this children’s book Peronio. It sure is cute (and the jingle is catchy too) but when I see something like this, I’m not sure what is real anymore!
Artist Jarrod Beck is building the moon out of paper, and he’s forming really big sheets!
This EcoHelmet, (made of paper, of course) is making the rounds on the internet after winning the £30,000 International James Dyson Award, a prize handed out by the British company each year. Invented by New York design graduate Isis Shiffer, I love the clever collapsible design, but I’m not quite sure about the need for disposable helmets. At least they are recyclable!
I’ve featured the work of Charles Young before, but he’s worth a repeat. Be sure to click through to the link to see more of these enchanting animated paper sculptures! The fact that he’s created one of these a day for almost two years is mind boggling!
The first lady of Uzbekistan got a very hands-on visit to the only papermaking studio in Central Asia, located in Samarkand on the Silk Road.
In the Studio: I’ve just started filming video tutorials for my first-ever on-line course. Registration begins soon, and class will start in mid-February. Details are coming soon! Here’s a photo collage showing one of the projects we’ll be making, a miniature folding shoji screen with a very clever hinge.
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If you read this blog regularly, would you consider making a donation to support the research, writing, design and delivery of The Sunday Paper? Click on the paper button at the left (I made that paper) to see how you can provide support.
And if you run a paper-related business, you might be interested in promoting your business in The Sunday Paper.
Thanks again to those of you who have pledged your support, and enjoy your Sunday!
December 2, 2016
Kite Paper
Here’s a bit about January’s project in the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar. Kite paper is basically colored wax paper, and it folds really well. Its translucency makes it perfect for making window stars, which I learned how to make when my children went to a Waldorf-inspired elementary school. The patterns are endless, and if you enjoy puzzles, kaleidoscopes or tangrams, you will enjoy making (and looking at) window stars.
The most common way to purchase kite paper is in books of 100 sheets of assorted colors, measuring approximately 6″ x 6″.You can find these booklets readily available on-line, and there are even large sheets of kite paper if you dream up a bigger project. I purchased packets of 500 sheets of this paper from Wet Paint in St. Paul, Minnesota. Those of you who purchased the custom paper pack received several sheets in an assortment of colors. I usually cut the sheets into quarters or even eighths to create multiple rectangles that get folded and assembled.
Here’s a spring background featuring the multi-colored window star from the calendar.
And a two-colored start shot today, when the leaves are gone and snow lies on the ground.
There are several alternatives to Kite Paper: regular waxed paper in white or brown, patty paper (those white waxed squares used to separate hamburgers) or even tissue paper. And there are entire books dedicated to various patterns and folds. Check out Magical Window Stars by Frederique Gueret.
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About the 25 Days of Paper 2016: It’s a great time to celebrate paper, and I’m delighted to share my ideas for using this amazing material with you. Receive updates via e-mail by adding your address in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enjoy the season, and feel free to leave a comment below and check out what people are making in the 25 Days of Paper FB Group!
December 1, 2016
Mulberry Paper & More
Mulberry Paper & More is an e-commerce paper company located near Denver, CO. I’ve been to visit twice, and it’s always fun to see a warehouse full of paper! Check out this cute paper tree they’ve created using a selection of the papers they carry.
Mulberry Paper & More is offering blog readers free shipping on any purchase until Dec. 31, 2016 with coupon code HHFREE.
Mulberry paper, also known as kozo paper, is made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. It provides a luxurious foundation for many art, craft and design projects. The paper feathers beautifully when hand torn and is a wonderful art paper for many projects including collage, painting, scrapbooking, note cards, lamp shades, wedding invitations, fish rubbings and many, many more. Mulberry paper is made in many different varieties including:
Unryu Paper: Lightweight, translucent and showing embedded threads of bark.
Kozo Paper: Heavyweight and highly textured.
Printable Paper: Smooth, text weight and printer compatible.
Marbled Momi Paper: Hand-marbled in exotic colors and texture.
Mulberry Paper Rolls: Large dimension mulberry paper sold on rolls for large projects.
Christmas Tree Project
Forest Momi and Gold Metallic Mulberry Papers
For one tree you will need eight sheets of mulberry paper in five different sizes starting at 8″ and down to 4″ plus a tube from a paper towel roll. You can use alternating colors or use all of the same paper for each square size.
Roll each square into a cone shape and secure with hot glue.
Using the largest cone, hold the paper towel roll vertical and place the cone onto the roll approximately 4″ from the bottom. Glue each sheet around the cone and visually determine the placement of the next set of cones for the next size prior to gluing. Repeat with cone sizes and wrap the tip of the last cone over the paper towel roll. Glue a bow on the top of the roll to finish the tree and cover the opening.
About our sponsor: Mulberry Paper & More carries an extensive selection of specialty papers from around the world. They offer a number of size selections in each paper to allow customers to choose the correct paper for their project.
