Working with my semi prepared swiss cheese plant (Monstera Deliciosa) fibre that I prepared here and here I started shaping and mixing the fibre with some cardamom pulp (kindly donated to me by another paper maker, Jill).
Using an old and stained piece of handmade paper by the late Marie Waterhouse – just perfect for this sample – I formed the basis of a tree shape.
Whilst only around A5 size it’s a good start on another technique and has taught me how to create designs using plant material, adhering it on to pre-made and dried paper. In the past I’ve only worked wet-on-wet. To help the paper attract the collage I first washed it lightly with water and then applied a heavily diluted glue/water mix to the tree shape.
Whilst this fibre is murderous to pulp (severely testing the motor of my blender!) it has worked brilliantly as a collage – using fibre prior to pulping, which has only been boiled as per my previous posts regarding this plant fibre – and it’s created very good tree bark texture.
Next step in this technique is to create a bigger sample with the addition of some super lightweight plant fibre paper as the tree canopy.
TactualTextiles 