Making Paper Cloth

I’ve been wanting to do this since I purchased Kelli Perkins’ Stitch Alchemy many months ago. Since my craft room/woman cave is almost organized, I thought it was time to play a bit.

What is paper cloth? It’s making a material using a base of material – could be muslin, canvas or even some of those ugly quilt blocks from last post – and adding paper and more until you are happy with it.

I hadn’t thought about painting over the ugly blocks until I saw Kathy’s website where she painted over – I know I couldn’t believe it – a quilt!

Anyway, to make paper cloth, lay a piece of muslin or canvas or that ugly material on the top of freezer paper, shiny side up.

Cover the material with a glue and water mixture. Kelli recommends 1:2 but just make it so it spreads easily over the material, in my case muslin. This mixture will make the muslin adhere to the freezer paper making it stable. Also, the freezer paper will keep your work surface clean.

Next, tear pieces of tissue paper and glue down covering most, if not all, of the muslin. I used white with sparkles.

Cloth Paper Beginning
Paper Cloth Beginning

I also added some cut out pieces of text. You can add whatever you want to at this point. You can paint it but it’s better to wait until it dries. But go ahead and add material, ribbon, text, collage pieces whatever. Then you need to let it dry overnight before you move on to your next step.

Painting over the cloth paper
Painting over the paper cloth

I started painting over this with watered-down acrylic paint. I was amazed at the differences in the shades due to the tissue. I really liked that effect and was surprised Kelli did not mention that in the book.

Finshed cloth paper
Finshed paper cloth

I stamped over it with acrylic and Lumiere (which I love, love, love!)

Here is one painted and stamped with just Lumiere.

Lumiere cloth paper
Lumiere paper cloth

You may notice there are words and also paper dots under the paint which were glued down the day before.

Finished Cloth Paper
Finished Paper Cloth

Here is another piece. In this one as the first layer I added colored tissue paper, pieces of fabric, yarn and sprayed with Glimmer Mist.

close up of Cloth Paper
close up of cloth paper

The next day I painted silver Lumiere circles and made swirls with Stikles. I again spritzed it with more Glimmer Mist in two colors.

This is so much fun and now I have more material to work with. I like this technique because you can just use what you have – stamps, paints, glitters, and pieces of paper – whatever makes you happy. And you can decorate as much as you want. These can be cut up and used as parts of a project or used as a whole piece of material. I’ve not yet decided. So much fun!