Serviettes as Backgrounds.

Before Christmas I was showing a friend how to make my serviette backgrounds and it wasn't until yesterday that I finished it off so here are the instructions.
First you need a fancy 3 ply serviette and you remove the bottom 2 white sheets leaving you with the top coloured layer.
I love this serviette but unfortunately they are no longer available.




The first thing to do is tear the serviette up into pieces and put aside.
Next you need a sheet of cartridge paper (like in childrens sketch books) some PVA glue and water( 50/50) of each and you proceed to glue the pieces onto the paper--no particular design just cross hatching them and continue until you have glued all the pieces down.
You need to use plenty of the glue/water mixture because this helps to create the wrinkles on the paper which creates texture--





Here is a picture of what it looks like with the gluing partially done---

The sheet completely covered and moist---------

While it is still wet add some other colour to it by dripping inks or dyes onto the wet surface

If the inks aren't spreading across the paper just spritz it with some water to help it along.

The ink travels across the paper like veins.

I have only used blue Quink writing ink here but you can add several colours if you like.

Don't worry if it looks like you have added too much ink because it dries out different to what it looks.

I also spritzed it with 2 different Moon Shadow Mists sprays.

Now leave it to dry--and don't worry when you come back to it and the edges are all curled up-just iron them flat--between a couple of sheets of glad bake(to protect the iron) or you can speed up the process with your hairdryer.

This is what I used for the colouring part of it.

You can see by this photo how wet it is---

When it was dry I gently rubbed "Goldfinger" paste over the top just enough to hilite the wrinkles.
This picture shows on the left side Goldfinger added and on the right side no Goldfinger.

I have been a little bit heavy handed with the Goldfinger on the bottom left hand side.

Here is a closup of the dry background without the Goldginger-----

And here is a closeup with the Goldfinger added

You can see some of the original orange colour showing throug on the bottom right side.

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Nellie asked if I could stitch onto the finished piece which reminded me I had meant to add that

I have also used a fine cotton as the base instead of paper which then allows me to stitch into it by hand or machine.

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