Seren
I’ve had a great time dying paper of late. I used it for a series of skyline cards I made…and love!!! The process is really easy…because the “paper” is just paper towel. Now, I will admit, I used the cheap kind and the expensive kind. The paper that is very square is the cheap kind…its machine made paper towel and has a rough texture…it’s Brawny or something like that. I used Golden Glossy Gel Medium to make these skyline cards. I’ve layered several different colors of dyed paper on top of each other to get the color variation where I wanted it…and these are built on book board. 
The book board is firm enough to handle the whole sending through the mail thing, but the abundance of Gel Medium need to fuse the paper together. Once everything dried I then added the building silhouettes. I used a very cool new marker to do the buildings.
My first plan was to use Sharpies (god I love those damn pens) but my black one is almost dead…and when I went to the art supply to buy new ones, I stumbled on something new…at least new to me! The marker is by Pentel and comes in various tip widths…though I only saw black, I’m hoping more colors are lurking out there somewhere. The pen is called a Permanent Markathon and it has a color recharger… which just means there’s a plunger and the end of the pen that you pump to force the ink down to the tip. The black is really, really black (not ashy) and great for big projects when you’re laying a lot of color and the tip starts to dry on you. No stopping to let your pen stand tip down to rejuvenate. I love a Sharpie, but the ink dries too fast at times…which means the tip dries out as well…not fun.
Ok back to paper dye.
The expensive paper towel I mentioned is made mostly of cotton fibers as far as I can tell and are made by Scott. My husband bought them for me at Home Depot and they’re called Rags in a Box. They are a bright white in color and feel more like fabric than paper. The box holds 200 sheets and cost $13. This stuff acts more than fabric than paper when being used in art projects. Glue-like adhesives don’t work well for adhering this stuff. I suggest that you sew or fuse this paper to your project with a fabric adhesive…the kind that comes in sheets and you iron. If you want to then add additional color to the paper, I suggest fabric paint/ink…like Fabrico inkpads and pens, Tsukineko all-purpose ink and Lumiere paints by Jacquard.
Next week I’m going to try starching some of it. I want to see if I can make it cardstock stiff so that I can make post cards. I would use fabric stiffener sheeting but I don’t like the way it looks on the back of the toweling and its not conducive to writing…even with a Sharpie…or a Markathon!! I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
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