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I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!
keep up all the good work and if you don't already have a gallery on this site, but would like one....get in touch and I'll sort you out. Make it your new year resolution?
A big thank you to our moderators, David and Sue, for all their time answering questions in the forum as well as ridding us of all the dreadful spammers!
Best wishes for a happy, healthy 2014.
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Thank you Jackie; and so many thanks to you and Russ for the marvellous communication hub you have created and maintain. All the very best for the coming year.
David
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I was just looking back at the absolute TON of information that is stored on this website!
More than 1300 topics by hundreds of posters from all over the world. Someone comes up with an idea, and others chime in to change it, improve upon it, and take it in other directions and to new heights.
And what the various artists in the gallery have done with it is incredible!
Just at a glance:
BASIC PAPIER MACHÉ: just paper and glue. Newspaper, copier paper, tissue paper, handmade paper. Inexpensive, it can be taken from absolutely simple to creations that are difficult to believe are made from just paper. You can use strips or pulp, or a combination of both. You can make practically anything you can imagine, from tiny paper fairies to huge realistic boulders, Easter Island figures, boats and giant teacups.
ADHESIVES: organic, food flours, chemical, water-soluble, water-resistant
ARMATURES & SUPPORT FORMS: boxes, taped/slotted/folded cardboard, taped/crushed/bundled aluminum cans, plastic or metal rods, wire mesh, reel wire, balloons, wadded up newspaper, carved/taped styrofoam and building insulation foam, expanding spray foam, inflated plastic forms, egg cartons, plastic bottles
MOLDS: bowls and other dishes, bottles, commercial molds from candymaking size up to those designed for concrete, rigid and flexible; one-part, two-part, multiple-parts, latex, homemade plaster molds, beach balls, the round end of a large propane tank, store mannequins
MOLD RELEASE AGENTS: plastic wrap/cling film, silicone spray or liquid, vegetable oil, Murphy's Oil Soap, wax
SURFACE TREATMENT: Ways to smooth the surface, rough it up or make it look like something else; real or pseudo-mosaic; fringed paper or fibers that look like hair or feathers, or real hair or feathers; sand or small pebbles, broken eggshells;
SURFACE COLORATION: Acrylic paint, oil paints, alcohol paints, spray paints, watercolors, stains, colored tissue paper, colored sand, spattered paint colors on a neutral background; related or contrasting colors daubed on with a sponge
It is simply incredible what creative people have done with just some paper, glue and a wonderful imagination!
Sue
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Alas, I spent the wee hours of New Year's night/morning repeatedly thawing out all of our frozen hot and cold water pipes with a blow dryer (it was a balmy negative twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and our oil stove ran out of fuel--a decidedly unpleasant one-two punch combo).
Anyhoo, here's looking to another paper-and-glue-encrusted year at The Papier Mache Resource!
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Oh, Patraw, how awful! Bundled up like an Eskimo so you can hardly move or grip the blower. I hope (at least) you were in a basement, out of the wind, and not crawling around under the house in the cold and dark.
Maybe the rest of winter will be more mild..... Oh, wait! It's only January 2nd! Blech!
Sue
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The frozen pipes were all inside the house, in the bathroom and kitchen, so, fortunately, I didn't have to go down into the basement or anything like that. We got another 100 gallons of oil for the stove yesterday morning, but it's going to be an uphill struggle to get the house warm again with these persistant sub-zero temperatures and wind chills.
As it's far too cold in the house to do PM at the moment (my paint water froze solid with delightful paintbrush "popsicle sticks" poking out of it, and my various glues, while they didn't freeze solid, are pretty sluggish), I've been going down to the local library to work on my projects instead (as long as I clean up my mess, the librarians don't care, and it is generally a peaceful/quiet place to work).
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The library?! My small-town library would have a litter of kittens if anyone tried to do that there!
I have wood heat and it surely does take a while to heat the place up after it gets cold, and it's only been a measly 11F for the low (since warmed up).
Here's hoping that you have a much less "eventful" winter for the rest of it.
Sue
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I keep saying we should get rid of the oil stove and get a wood stove, but nobody listens to me. There's literally a forest across the street, so we'd never lack for fuel (not to mention our barn that's literally filled, wall-to-wall, and to the ceiling, with lumber from tearing down the garage last year when the roof on that structure caved in from the weight of the snow).
I don't use water in my papier mache and work small, so my messes are of the dry variety (I use a piece of scrap paper or plastic to spread my glue on my strips, so that I don't get the library's tables sticky or dirty) and relatively small in scope. If I had a big bowl of wet papier mache paste and my hands coated with the stuff, I expect my local librarians would have kittens too.
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The global economy is so unstable that there might come a time in the near future where wood is the only fuel that is available.
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