Tutorial: Upcycling Blank Newsprint
April 13, 2010
I got my Studio Calico kit on Friday. Along with the kit, I had ordered some American Crafts binders. So the kit came in a big box with some packing paper. A few pieces of crumpled newsprint. Well, I couldn't let that newsprint go to waste! I decided to pretty it up and turn it into wrapping paper.
This is what the newsprint looks like when you pull it out of the box:
Uncrumple the paper and grab a permanent marker. Something that won't run when you add water on top of it.
I used a Permapaque by Sakura.
Now, go ahead and draw a design all over the paper. I chose to do flowers.
You can see how big that piece of newsprint is in the first picture. It's about 2'x3', so lots of room to doodle!
After I was satisfied with my flowers, I added three colors of Adirondack Color Wash (Butterscotch, Red Pepper, and Stream).
Then I used a large wet paintbrush (just wet with water) to blend all the color together. Adirondack Color Wash is water-reactive, so it blends beautifully.
(All the water actually flattens out your paper too, which is a nice side benefit.) While the paper was still wet, I picked out a few flowers to decorate with gesso.
I love the way the white stands out against that colorful background!
To finish it off, I flicked my paintbrush (loaded with water and gesso) to get great big white splats everywhere.
If flowers aren't your thing, here's one on which I drew a random pattern.
And I used watercolor paints for a bit more control in the coloring phase.
I skipped the gesso and sprayed this one with red and then black watercolor splats.
Here's another look at the scale of these doodly paintings:
It takes up a lot of desk space!
Once your pretty doodles dry, you can roll up the paper and save it to wrap a gift later, or you can use it right away. Wouldn't you like to get a pretty gift like this?
It's for my Dad (yes, you can put a flower on a package for a man), whose birthday is coming up soon! The flower, by the way, is from Nat Kalbach's line of paper called eMotions. Pretty, right?
So, the next time you get a package don't just throw away the stuffing! Make it into something lovely!
Thanks for stopping by!