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Voyage

This new project is one of the most ambitious I’ve crafted. I was unsure of where to categorize it in my ‘gallery’ as it includes papercraft, recycled materials and woodcraft. It’s also the largest piece I’ve made – the frame is 50cm square.

The body of the ship and the seagulls are moulded with paper clay, and the waves formed from torn sheets of paper painted with watercolours. The masts are cut with a scroll saw from scraps of wood and jointed together. The sails are recycled cotton, cut from an old sheet. I tried different experiments to shape the sails as though a strong wind was blowing, before finally using a heavy starch, together with shaped paper supports behind them. The rigging ropes are made from unraveled cotton cord.

The frame is only 4cm deep, so once again I had to massage and adapt my original concept to fit, without losing its 3D perspective. (The original design was a 3-masted ship!)

While I can always identify aspects that could be better, overall I’m quite happy with the final project.

[Click near the top of the pictures to enlarge]

  • Making the Masts
  • Attaching Sails
  • Construction & Rigging
  • Making Waves!
  • Assemblage
  • Side view of layers
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ReCreating Photos

This set of 4 new paper sculptures began as photographs I took recently along walks near the river and sea.
By layering and shaping prints of the photos and using cast paper mulch to build them out, I’ve created 3D settings for little creatures made from paper clay. The parts added to the photos (the paper mulch bark and stones, and paper clay creatures) are painted and sealed. As I wasn’t pleased with the painted results on the lorikeets, I finished them with tiny paper feathers. One of the most difficult aspects of these pieces is constructing the whole thing into a frame!
(Click near the top of the pictures below to enlarge)

Shy Possums

  • Casting paper mulch
  • Texturing ‘bark’
  • Possums

Seagull lookout

  • Moulded paper stones
  • Paper clay seagulls
  • Gluing the flying gulls

Rainbow Lorikeets

  • Sculpting the bark rings
  • Gluing the feathers
  • Finding a home

Brush-tailed Possum

Mouse Heaven

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Oh my canvas!

Don’t store a blank canvas away, waiting for inspiration!

I’ve been imagining a mouse plague wreaking havoc in my craft cupboard!
My mischievous mice are sculpted in paper and painted with acrylic colour and sealant.
The bodies are recycled paper mulch, cast in plaster moulds which I made using plasticine and Plaster of Paris. The finer details, like ears, feet, eyes and tails are hand-shaped with paper clay.
(Click the top of the pictures below to enlarge)

  • Forming the features
  • Casting moulds
  • Painting
  • Arghh!

Although they’re the size of real house mice, they’re a bit more cartoon-like as I tried to give them little personalities.
The canvas needed a backing (for obvious reasons) so I used bright red to add colour and to highlight the rips. The scariest part of the project was ripping the first hole into a perfectly good canvas!
It’s been a fun project; it makes people smile, but no one wants it hanging on their wall!

  • The final ruined canvas!
Oh my canvas! V.2

A year later and I’ve created this new, more ‘palatable’ version of my canvas destroyers!
Smaller white mice are much cuter, and the partially painted still life including cheese gives them something to munch on.

This piece has been created as a “cautionary tale” of procrastination: What happens when unfinished artwork is stored and forgotten in a cupboard.

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Poppies

I made this little vase of poppies during a demonstration to show how the layered paper sculptures are constructed and how the recycled diffuser film is used.

Once again, it’s all made of shaped paper and I’ve used three layers to give depth, with the diffuser sheet cut to the shape of water in the vase.  I decided to back the picture with glass, which allows light to shine through the vase and water.  I’m quite pleased with this effect. Unfortunately, all the glass, film and acrylic reflections make photographing these incredibly difficult when all the layers are together!

  • The paper vase
  • Front layer (with film)
  • Centre layer on acrylic sheet
  • Back layer on paper
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Nesting

I’ve just completed a new paper sculpture titled “Nesting”.
I gave myself some new challenges with this one, like designing patterns folded and shaped from a single piece of paper.  The nest, the birds and the foliage are all cut from single sheets, with just the tiniest bit of gluing to insert contrast colour for the birds.  As shown in the photo below (click photos to enlarge), I made 14 attempts to make a nest in this way!  It’s amazing how precise a pattern has to be to make the final product look messy and unfinished!

Another challenge was entwining the foliage from separate layers together into one picture. I love working with paper, but it’s so fragile and delicate so this was quite difficult.

  • Nest pattern attempts!
  • Weaving from a single sheet
  • The final nest
Creating the Birds
  • Background and mounting blocks
  • Central layer
  • Entwining layers
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Regatta

I admit I’ve been a bit obsessed creating ‘underwater’ themes for my paper sculptures!
I picked up this 3 panel frame in an op-shop some time ago and decided to see what I could re-create with it. Although I’m not quite as pleased with the finished product as my previous underwater pictures, I had fun creating patterns for the 3D yachts and racing them! The fish are painted with an opal sheen to give a silvery appearance; unfortunately it doesn’t show up in the photos. (Click the top half of the photos to enlarge)
A particular challenge with this piece was the shallow depth of the frame – just 25mm to create and construct multiple layers.

  • Designing the yachts
  • Cutting the diffuser film
  • Setting the boats on waves
  • Background fish layer
  • The underwater effect
  • Before framing
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Coral Reef

This is my third paper sculpture project using LCD backlight diffuser film to create an underwater effect. Just like Lily Pond and Fish Bowl, this piece is constructed in layers, using a transparent acrylic sheet to ‘float’ the objects in the centre.
Most of the structure is a collage of photographs, cut and shaped into 3D images together with paper models of coral, fish and the yacht.
These pieces are very difficult to photograph due to the film picking up the smallest reflections, but the images below of the construction will give a clearer view. [Click the top half of the photos to enlarge.] I hope I have an opportunity to exhibit these 3 pieces at some stage as they look quite different “in the flesh”!

  • Making paper models
  • Constructing the background
  • The centre transparency
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Fish Bowl

This is the sequel to “Lily Pond’.
It’s my second experiment using an LCD backlight diffuser sheet from an old laptop which blurs objects directly behind it, giving it an underwater effect. The artwork is constructed from cut and sculptured paper and put together in 3 layers with a clear acetate sheet in the centre. This time I’ve made the fish 3 dimensional, although they are somewhat hidden by the ‘underwater’ blurring.

  • Constructing the centre layer
  • Goldfish close-up
  • Fish close-up

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Lily Pond

I’ve been digging through my salvaged materials to ReCreate a new art ‘sculpture’.

‘Lily Pond’ is made predominantly from ring-folder dividers (see picture below).  It incorporates paper cutting and shaping, constructed in three layers, with the centre layer supported on a piece of clear overhead projector film.

The ‘secret ingredient’ that creates the underwater effect?  An LCD backlight diffuser sheet that comes from behind an old dismantled laptop screen!  This film is mirror-like on one side, but the other side warps, magnifies and blurs objects directly behind it, making the layered art look underwater. (Click on the close-ups above to enlarge)

It’s weird, because viewing it from the side you can see nothing behind the film – you have to view it front-on, but that makes it very unusual and a bit mysterious.  I’m planning to explore the possibilities further with more ‘underwater’ experiments.  Stay tuned!

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The Recycled Paper Boutique

This ‘boutique’ shop window was inspired by memories of dressing paper dolls as a child, together with my love of op-shops and sewing, although creating paper clothing is much more challenging than fabric!  

The mannequins are shaped with a scroll saw from offcuts of mdf (medium density fibreboard). While mannequins don’t usually have hair, I’ve used wood shavings as hair made their hats look and fit so much better.

Paper scraps from office stationery, wrapping paper, craft offcuts etc, are shredded and mulched into paper pulp. The clothing is then constructed by experimenting with a variety of paper sculpture techniques;  cast paper formed in plaster moulds (to give shape to the bodices and accessories), fluting and shaping the skirts by gently pulling wet pulp sheets onto fabric pieces and leaving them to dry, and by layering sheets of different coloured pulps together.

  • Mannequins
  • Moulded & shaped paper
  • Mirrored ‘shop window’

I’ve used mirror paper in the background to give the impression of a shop window, and also to show off the back of the models.

This piece was created for a Fringe exhibition in 2022 at Gallery 1855 called “Fashion – Make a Statement”.