Finger Painting for Grownups! 

April 21-28, 2023

A week ago I met up with two wonderfully creative friends, Mimi and Jane, and we spent 4+ hours together making paste papers. And oh what fun we had!  

But wait ……. Huh? What? Paste paper?

If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of or made anything called paste paper before.  Not so fast …… I’m betting as a child you used to dabble in the fine art of finger painting, or perhaps you’ve created papier-mâché sculptures with flour paste? Well, after a few hours brushing and scribbling on and in a mixture of gloppy cellulose and acrylic paints on paper, I concluded that making paste paper is just like finger painting, but for grownups!

Seriously?

Paste paper is one of the oldest decorated papers used by bookbinders. Open up a centuries old book and there’s a good chance the inside of the covers are decorated with colorful papers adorned with all kinds of designs. Taking leftover bookbinding paste and adding pigment, they then brushed the mix onto paper.  While the paste/paint mixture was still wet, they would make strokes and stipples, swirls and zigzags, creating their designs using things like knives, stamps, combs, or just about anything laying about that would leave marks. Then once the paper dried, it was cut to size to fit the inside book covers.

A quick internet search on “paste paper” turns up many recipes for making the paste, what paints to add and proportions, the kind and weight of paper to use, and how to prep the paper (to wet or not to wet?). It’s quite overwhelming.

Thankfully, after conducting exhaustive research on these subjects, Mimi took the matter in hand and decided we should use Elmer’s brand Art Paste, which is powdered methyl cellulose. About a week before our event, she mixed a box of this powder with water, allowed it to sit overnight where it turned into a gallon of a clear gloppy/bloopy substance about the consistency of jello. Actually it reminded me of the goo that floats about inside a lava lamp.  You know what I mean, right? 

Event day …… 

After a mini lesson from Mimi, the three of us donned aprons and surgical gloves and jumped in!

Step 1: mix a few drops of acrylic paint into 1/4 cup of gloppy paste. Stir, stir, stir.

Step 2: wet a sheet of paper with water from a spray bottle, and lay flat on a plastic covered surface.

Step 3: drop a few spoonfuls of the paste/paint mix on the moistened paper.

Step 4: using a foam brush, slather the entire paper with the paste/paint mix.

Step 5: pick a tool, any tool, and begin mark-making to create astonishing patterns and designs.

Step 6: if the design isn’t amazing enough, repeat from Step 3 until happy.

Step 7: remove beautifully decorated paper from work surface and set aside to dry.

Step 8: oooh and ahhhh!

That’s it!  Almost ……..

Lessons learned from lots of playful experimenting.

Some acrylic paint colors refused to mix with the paste, making the mix look granulated (but we used it anyhow, and got some cool effects).

The thicker you apply the paste/paint mix, the longer it will take to dry on the paper.

Results were better on 98# paper; lighter weight papers proved a bit too flimsy. 

Sulfite paper worked great; it was durable, stood up to lots of vigorous mark-making, and the paint didn’t bleed through to the back.

Clean mark-making tools after each mark is made on the paper, to get cleaner lines (of course, in our excitement, we failed to follow this tip, causing interesting blended designs).

If blending colors on the paper (which we did a lot of), the foam brush used for blending usually ends up as the brush used as the dish dipping tool. If you want to keep colors pure, use the brushes for spreading paste/paint mixes and keep the original mixing spoons for doling out the colors onto the paper. On the other hand, some of the blended colors in the dishes looked awesome and ended up on the papers anyhow!

Tools that worked great were combs, balloons, cardboard tubes, bubble wrap, toothbrushes, credit cards, cookie cutters and chopsticks. 

Workstation cleanup is recommended after each exquisitely decorated paper is removed for drying, because leftover paint will end up on the next piece of paper.  (Actually this wasn’t so bad, if some color is wanted on the backside of the paper.)

Any idea is worth trying; it’s impossible to make mistakes; laugh and have fun!

5 Star Rating! What a great project.  Thanks so much to Mimi and Jane for making this event a blast! We each ended up with gorgeous papers for things like journal and sketchbook covers, calligraphy backgrounds, or they are definitely suitable for framing! 

Follow up: In the week following our paste paper-making extravaganza on April 21st, I decorated 9 more papers on my own, modifying several steps, like totally immersing my papers in water. This is addictive creative project, and a super way to play like a kid again! Maybe you’ll be enticed to create some paste papers of your own?

Need more inspiration? Check out this link!

Madeleine Durham, a fine artist living in Santa Fe, creates gorgeous landscapes, florals and mandalas paste papers, many with a southwest flair.  Be sure to watch her videos. Wow! https://www.madeleinedurham.com