Goodness Gracious Large Sheets of Paper!

I'm not sure I've ever been really satisfied with a post title that wasn't a terrible pun or reference.

More to the point, I've been wanting to print out and perfect-bind some fantastic fanfiction novels that I think are so good they deserve a physical place in my library. The thing is, I don't really do representational art, and there isn't a lot of fanart around for this particular series. So what, I wondered, should I do about covers?

I got to thinking about colors, but I didn't want a solid color. Eventually I ended up at "aha, there's a local paper store, I think they sell great big marbled sheets -- that would be pretty!"

So I went and got some paper. I can't emphasize enough how beautiful this is outside of the photo. The feathery one is pearlescent and shiny! (These are big -- nearly 20 x 30 inches!)

And then a while later I went back and got some more in a different style, because PRETTY PAPER. And also because there are a bunch of books I need to print and bind.

And then a week later I decided that I needed another green selection, so I spent a whole Saturday hunting through the various art supply stores that were any slightly-mad definition of the word "nearby", and came home with two whole sheets of paper... one of them from the paper store I had bought the others from in the first place.

 

I suspect I can't even print on the one with gold swirls, because it's a kind of soft pre-crumpled paper. Maybe if I fix it to some carrier cardstock somehow?

My fixation on finding The Perfect Green Marbled Paper came to an end only when I went out and bought a marbling kit. I don't want to make the paper myself, but somehow without having the kit I couldn't accept these beautiful-but-not-quite-what-I-imagined papers as good enough. Now that I could make something closer to my imagination, I think they're probably fine.

Brains are weird.

Bookmarks LXXIV: Basics Geometric

 

The simplicity of black, white, and silver goes nicely with some delicate geometric patterns. But really the point was to create something nice while testing my Basics queue inkpads and trying out some new stamps. I think it succeeded pretty well -- except for the part where I didn't make a second bookmark to test the bronze, copper, and gold!

 

We can't actually see any of the ink I was testing here, though. In order to make everything show up nicely, it's covered in embossing powder. It's possible I was testing that too? I'm pretty sure the reason the black and white designs are on contrasting squares is not 100% for the visual effect. They'd look pretty good on grey/silver too. I think it's mostly that I knew I was going to mess up with the black embossing powder several times and didn't want to remake the whole bookmark each time!

This post was written in February 2019 and backposted.

Bookmarks LXXXIII: Sweet Sixteen Dinosaurs

 

These bookmarks are all about testing some of the inkpads in my Sweet Sixteen queue to make sure they didn't need refilling. Considering that inspiration, they turned out pretty cute! I think I can credit the stamp set for that rather than the inks.

This post was written in February 2019 and backposted.

Bookmarks LXXII: Peacock

 

Gosh but I love a peacock blue. And when I saw this stamp in the store, it said "Buy me, I'm shaped like a bookmark". It's not like it was wrong.

This post was written in February 2019 and backposted.

Bookmarks LXXI: Fair Fletching

 

These bookmarks make me think of painfully bright winter days where it's so beautiful and snowy that you feel like you just have to go out and do something. I couldn't come up with a way to condense that feeling into a title, though.

I'm pretty sure the inspiration here was 100% the backing paper. Then I just piled on the arrow shapes and did some color-matching stamps. The penguin is part of a set with the polar bear of Snowflake Floe, and it was still on my table from November. What is this "cleaning up and putting away" of which you speak?

This post was written in February 2019 and backposted.