Thursday for Tips and Techniques - Post-it-Notes for Groovi?

What are you on about, I hear you say?  Why would I need a post-it-note if I am doing parchment?  Are you sitting comfortably ...... then I will begin.

This is a piece of work,designed by Christine Coleman, started at class with Pat White, all done traditionally.  There is still a lot of work to do, but what happened to me with this applies to any parchment work.

Let me explain.

We often see and hear people ask if parchment has a right or wrong side.  

1.  With the coloured designer parchment, there is a difference.  The colour is flooded onto the parchment on one side only, and shows as a little shiny and more intense.  The coloured side is officially the wrong side.  If you want good white work, then you will emboss the lines and white work with the "wrong" side facing upwards.  If you emboss on the other, more muted, side, then your white work will be more muted too.  It is not wrong, just different.  Get the corner of a piece of coloured parchment and try embossing from both sides to see the difference for yourself.

Perforating is normally done from the "right" side, so that the spiky bits are not visible.

2.  The most commonly used parchment is the translucent type, and this does not have a right or wrong side, UNTIL you start to work on it.  Remember, you emboss on the wrong side and perforate from the right side.  

The photo above is taken from the front, the right side.  We traced the outlines with a fine Micron pen on the front, and used the same pen to fill in the black areas, also on the front.  I found I needed the Lightwave to do the filling in and it showed up lots of gaps not visible to the naked eye.  To intensify the black, we used acrylic on the back.  The Micron pen would not stand up to the Dorso Oil needed to add the background colour, which is why the acrylic was needed.

Great, no problem.  Off home then to finish everything that we didn't have time for in class.  The next day, I got it out again to continue, dorsoed the back and applied the colour.  Then I turned it over to check if I needed to add more colour.  It was a little pale, so I added more colour, and started to blend it, but nothing happened, so, thinking the oils had evaporated, I added a little more to the sponge and continued blending.  It worked well, except that there was now a nasty grey smudge all over the design!  

Are you with me?  What had I forgotten to do?    

I had completely forgotten to turn the parchment over again and had started to colour on the front instead of the back.  As a result, the Dorso Oil had started to move the black pen on the front.

You will often hear advice to write front and back on your work once you have started, to prevent accidents like this.  I had done that, but obviously that was not enough.  So, I had a think and decided I needed something more visible than a bit of writing in the corner to stop such an annoying mishap.  

Hence the post-it-note, much harder to ignore.  It is when you make mistakes after a lot of hard, careful work, that you start to work out how to make life easier and to avoid further problems.  You do need to be careful where you put the sticky bit, as you do not want residue from the glue on your work.  I attached this one to the edge that I intend to cut off at the end.

I hope this helps some of you to avoid my mistake.  Have a lovely time with you crafting.  By the way, the lovely Linda Williams has been on Hochanda today for the Pergamano shows.  Those shows are full of lots of hints and techniques from Linda and are available on catch up on Hochanda.