Giving it a shellacking

Hi everyone,

Last week I was very lucky indeed. I was allowed to join a class at an art school I left three years ago. They were having a visiting tutor for two days – someone I’d wanted to learn from for a long time. He’s a printmaker and book/mixed media artist from North Queensland, Glen Skien. I had no idea what we were going to do, but we had to bring 10 signatures for a book, lots of decorative papers and various other things such as ruler, cutting mat, an awl, thread.  I was only able to join the class on the Thursday, because I work on a Friday now.  My lucky day! We made a BOX! I’ve never made a box before. My printmaker friends can all make boxes. Sometimes they get an assignment to make a series of prints, with a box to go with them.  I did up to 2nd year printmaking, but I did a book, not a box. On the Friday they did ‘case binding’ which I’ve done before. The tutor was great! Not precious about it at all – made it seem simple, and it was.

The sample box was a small upright box to hold postcards. I really liked that idea, because I recently participated in a postcard swap with Anita.  This page will show you Anita’s postcard to me, and  you can see mine here. Most of the students opted for that size box. The size was beautifully proportioned, and better still, useful! It was EASY to make. I was surprised – I thought you’d have to be mega-accurate – but no, not when you collage over the cracks.  I had all sorts of paper, but Glen’s advice was just to start and see where it takes you. So my box is a mixture of credit card paper (see Kelsey’s blog for the recipe),  paste papers,  itajime papers,  (see Gail’s blog for that), some lacy Japanese papers, and a black tiger-skin lino print on bright orange paper. Garish, huh? That’s where the shellac comes in – I’m putting on many coats of shellac, and it’s toned down to a beautiful golden glow.   

At the weekend I made another one the same, but this time I used joss papers and Chinese ephemera, including the wrapper from my precious bottle of Yu Yee Oil.  Some of the papers are of pitiful quality, but I’d noticed with some of the delicate papers I used on the first box, that with glue underneath & shellac on top, they were quite stable.