Pass the tissues, please

 

One of the great "inventions" of the 20th century was the gift bag.  No longer did we need to wrap, fold, and carefully match the ends and sides of decorative gift wrap.  Instead, we could simply place a sheet of colorful tissue inside the bag, then insert the gift and pull the tissue up around the gift.  As a result, many of us were left with beautiful and colorful sheets of tissue with which we had to deal.  For people like myself who saves EVERYTHING (almost), this makes this technique even more fun.  I'm sure many of us have lots of tissue papers just begging to be recycled into art.

Supplies from left:

110 lb. cardstock, one sheet for each background desired

Various sheets of tissue papers (I chose all warm colors)

1 inch brush

Cup with small amount of water

Inexpensive white PVA glue

Add inexpensive white glue to the cup of water.  You won't need a lot of the mixture because a little goes a long way.

Mix well.

Tear tissues into strips in the size of your choice.  The strips should not be all the same size.

Wet the cardstock with the glue/water mix (which I forgot to show), then randomly lay the tissues on on the wet cardstock.

Add more glue/water mix over the layers of tissue.  The tissues actually look better when they are overlapped.  Allow to dry completely before removing the excess tissues.

When completely dry, remove excess tissue.  These can now be used as backgrounds for your mixed media art or cut to make backgrounds for cards.  You may need to lay the finished background under a heavy book for a few days to straighten it.

This is Day 6 of 22 and I recycled several colored tissue papers.