Amate Bark Paper

Last weekend I spent Saturday morning learning how to make Amate paper. The fiber used in this work is a kozo from Thailand. I am also going to work with a kozo from Japan in a couple of weeks.

The long process starts with soaking the bark in water over night, boiling the bark and then simmering the bark for 8 hours or so. Once this all takes place the paper is ready to be made. From a pound of kozo I ended up with all sorts of different sizes of papers to test print. I experimented with thicknesses and textures and seeing what type of results I would get. The paper is beautiful and in the next couple of weeks, I will post my in process prints. KathyAnne Art members can see the whole pictorial from start to finish and pics of each step, on Art in Common. Join KathyAnne Art with this link.

Bark has been pounded with a rock to get to this point. Here it is still dryingThis is a piece that is already dry.

Printed after coating with inkAID
Another print. These 2 prints are from a larger piece of the grand canyon. They will be layered into something I am working on.

Digital Elements Textural Book

Finished working on a new book this afternoon. I will be adding it to my Etsy shop soon. While I was downloading the pictures for this post, I realized I didn't have a full view of one side of the piece, so I need to do that before I can add it to Etsy.

This book is 18" long when open accordion style, 4" high and 4" in depth. The book is made with digital prints on all sorts of surfaces. Each photo of the pages has a description of the materials from each page.

I started out with card stock squares and worked the composition on the individual squares using gel medium instead of glue to attach the composition to the base pages and build up the surace. Some pieces are sewn together, some wrapped with wire as they are assembled for each composition. attach them to the square before. As I put the pages together, 2 holes were punched in each side and then tied with hemp or wire to attach them.

Some of the materials used:

Digital prints on the following surfaces: organdy, watercolor paper, recycled beverage cans, metallic crinkle paper, hand made paper, hand made skin, tyvec, lutradur, canvas, metal mesh, copper mesh and velum.

Hemp, twigs, wire, dyed cheesecloth, dyed canvas, dyed burlap, beads, recycled quilt pieces and embroidery thread