2015 #1 Playful Portfolios {by Helen Chilton}

2015 Theme 1: Fragile Papers

Hi everyone Helen here, joining you this evening with a post about Waxed Tissue paper and heated Portfolios. By shaving the Portfolios onto tissue paper and then screwing it up into a ball, it stops the shavings blowing away as you heat them and also reminded me of tie dying with material. You can work with one colour at a time or lots of different coloured shavings in one go. The Portfolios melt and you can scrunch the paper up several times to spread the colours.

Step One.

Fold a sheet of the tissue paper in four and scrape some of the Portfolio pastel onto it:

Step Two

Scrumple up the tissue paper and heat with heat gun. Squidge it around a bit:

Step Three.

Open up and add different colour shavings. Scrumple and heat:

Add further colours in the same way:

Step Four.

When you've finished, separate out the layers of tissue paper. You'll see the crayon has seeped through to each layer. I've used the lighter one for stamping my image onto and the darkest for making my background:

Step Five.

To make my project, I stamped text onto the tissue paper first in coordinating colours of Distress inks, then added shavings and heated.  Then I stamped the text in white Portfolio crayon over the top. To do this, heat the stamp, rub over the crayon, heat again and stamp:

Step Six.

Stamp the image from Hot Pick 1004 and die cut this and bottom layers using  Grunge Flowers 2 and 3. Layer onto white Portfolio stamped corrugated card and add embellishments.

Hot Pick 1004

I like the element of surprise you get with this technique - you could try working from dark to light with the Portfolios, or adding a whole layer of melted white on top to create a subtler colour palette.This technique works equally well with the Waxed Kraft Crunchy paper which is a little more robust. I got round the fragility of the tissue paper by using several layers at once. 

Thanks for looking! Helen

Thanks Helen, your command of the Portfolios never ceases to amaze us. Such vibrancy from a relatively simple medium.. and of course because they aren't wet, your fragile tissue isn't compromised.. only enhanced. 

We would love you to join in with challenge #1: Fragile Papers. If you are inspired by any of our guests who have blogged on this topic over this fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. This link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Jan 18th 2015, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.