Resin Artwork

As I mentioned the other day, these are papercuttings that I’ve mounted on a wooden board I stained a reddish teak color, and then covered in resin.

I have this little trio of niches I needed something special for, and I just couldn’t find what I had in mind, so of course I decided to make it. {I haven’t decided, should I leave them propped up or should I hang them in the center of the niche? What do you guys think?}

I was scouring etsy, looking for some kind of a painting or illustration that reflected a midcentury modern or art deco style, and I just couldn’t find anything. The only midcentury artwork I found at all was very 60’s lounge looking, and I don’t want to go to far that direction. Ever since Austin Powers, that starts to look very campy very quickly.

I went out and bought this Dover book* looking for inspiration. On a piece of tissue paper, I traced the image from the book, and then made the lines thick enough to do a paper cutting from it. Images intended for stained glass make PERFECT papercuttings.

* Side note – I didn’t know about Dover until my graphic designer friend Chris turned me onto them. If you are a collage artist, or really any kind of artist, they are just indispensable. Royalty free images from throughout the history of art.

Here’s a papercut I made when I was toying around with the idea of making coasters like this. Um, no. WAY too labor intensive. But this gives you an idea of how thick I made the lines, about 1/4″ thick, to hide the edges of the paper behind it.

Then I pulled out all the scraps of solid colored cardstock I had lying around. As a scrapbooker I literally have drawers full of this stuff, and it made color selection pretty easy since I tend to use my favorite colors over and over, the scraps of them all kind of worked together.

Now, take your papercutting and use it to trace the shape you want to fill each section. Make sure that your papercutting and your cardstock are both right side down so you don’t have to deal with pencil marks. I ended up marking the back of my papercutting because I kept getting confused and then all my pieces were facing the wrong way. Cut your traced piece out, leaving about 1/8″ margin around the pencil line to make sure that all the edges get hidden.

The gluing is a little bit tricky, so you have to do it in steps. You’ll need to make this paper water tight because the resin will change the colors, so instead of using a glue, I actually use an acrylic sealer. I took a spare piece of cardstock, traced the papercutting to make myself a kind of a map, and then used the sealer to glue all the pieces in place. I let it dry with a heavy book on top to prevent the curling that wet paper does so well. Then, when it was dry, I used the sealer to glue the papercutting on top. I sealed the whole top about twice more, sealed the papercutting to the wood board, and when it had dried overnight, I poured the resin over the top.

I made a whole extra set of these while I was making mine, so they’ll be in the shop whenever I decide to make that happen. It’s a little bit of a time consuming process, and since I’ve decided I’m not a huge fan of resin I’d like to see if there’s anything else I can use to get a result I’m pleased with, but the papercuttings themselves? Mighty addictive. Especially the playing around with color and making a little puzzle for myself. I think I’ll come back to this project again soon.