The Joys of Finger-painting

For the last couple of days I've been spending time playing with what we called finger paint when my kids were little. Now I'm a 'grown up' I've found a fancy name for it - paste paper - and an excuse to play with it. I use it in my book making.

 As well as the cornflour and water, I add glycerine, detergent and a little pva glue. And paint, of course.

This is just paint spread around, another sheet of paper placed on top, pressed down, then gently pulled apart.

First I did a rubbing of the gravel on our driveway, then spread paint over the paper and poked at it with a looped mop painting tool from Playways, in Hamilton East.

Another tool from Playways - a roller stamp with a house on it.

 The tool for this was a grouting tool from when we laid our floor tiles.

 I didn't have the red I wanted, but this is still quite yummy.

 Not a good photo - it's an orangey mix of leftover paint - the red and yellow mixed together scraped on black paper with the grouting tool, and is really lovely

 Pulled red paper. Gorgeous.

 This one was done on a textured brown paper and is nicer than it looks here - I just couldn't get it to photograph well.

But my favourites were with gold paint on black paper - and were just a way of using up the gold paint which I used with the red and yellow, but which isn't even visible there!

 Again, these were made with pre-school tools! small sponges attached to dowel handles, ranging in size from around a 10cent piece, to the top of a shot glass.

 (Sorry about the shadows.)

My favourite - and sadly I don't know how I got that veined effect so it's definitely a one off!

 Next week - having received my new book from the wonderful Book Depository, I'll start playing with new book forms and use some of these papers.