Messy May “belonging”

Series: Messy May #16

Prompt: 16 BELONGING
Host: Meg @megjournals – their response
Guidance: Create a soft, layered background using tissue papers, paint, and pressed flowers (or something else flat that represents you).

This was another day where I was not inspired by the prompt word; I did, however, like the idea of using tissue to enclose dried flowers on the page.

Over the years I’ve seen lots of examples of people gluing tissue, usually with stamping on it, to an art journal and then the tissue disappears into the background. This has never really worked for me — even if it looks right at first, it always seems to dry with varying amounts of white patches. I’ve tried the plain collage papers by Dina Wakley and Tim Holtz and various tissue papers, along with different glues and mediums, but without much success. I need to make the time to do some proper experimenting.

But I still wanted to make this piece. A while ago I treated myself to a few lightweight Japanese watermark tissues including watermark unryu white which is very fine: only 9gsm. If that wouldn’t be translucent on the page, nothing ever would. And it worked. It worked so well it’s actually hard to see it on the photographs: there’s a hint of the texture on some and the edges are visible on the angled photo at the bottom of this post. It’s a lovely paper to use and not really that expensive, though I don’t know how well it would take stamping — definitely need to do some more experimenting.

I started with a few brushstrokes in the background, then a piece of collage paper, followed by the dried pressed flowers and a sprinkle of glitter. All of that was encased with the fine tissue paper, in fact the only thing that wasn’t is the scrap of dyed cheesecloth at the bottom.

I would have liked the paint swirls to have been a little softer, but other than that, I am very happy with how this one turned out. And I got to use some of my precious supplies — the ones that are so nice or you have so few of that you almost don’t want to use them — in the process.