Weaving a Journal Page

Today, I am hosting Tuesday Technique for Blissfully Art Journaling yahoo group. Last week, Carolyn offered the first technique - Checkerboard. Here is the link.
Let's begin ...

First, paint, collage, and/or stamp your journal page and another sheet of paper larger than your journal page. Leaf stamps and ink pads were used on this journal page. Brown packaging paper was crumpled, smoothed out and stamped with an “antique peeling paint texture” stamp (which I think looks like bark).
Turn your journal page over and draw a line approximately ¾” from the binding.

Cut horizontal lines stopping at the drawn line (The picture shows the page turned for ease of cutting). The lines may be drawn or cut freehand. Your lines may be straight or wavy. Line width may vary also.

The other piece of prepared paper is cut into vertical strips. Be sure to keep all the strips in the same order you cut them so that they will fit together. In the above picture, the ruler is lined up with the point at which the horizontal strips start and with the left edge of the vertical strips. I placed the vertical strips below the page so I could see where my last strip would be and left the right edge uncut.


Above, I have shown two ways of weaving the vertical strips into your journal page. The first, using a ruler works well when your strips have been cut in straight lines. In the second picture, each horizontal strip has been bent back along the curved line of the previously woven vertical strip. During this process, you may wish you had more hands. Just keeping working the vertical strips as far to the left as possible and holding them in place as the horizontal strips are folded back down. Before you add the last strip, you will have to cut the right edge. Where you cut will depend on whether you want a border with just the horizontal paper showing like the left side of the page or if want the weaving to go to the edge.

Carefully, turn your page over while being careful not to pull out the top and bottom horizontal strips. Lay your backing paper down and cover it with glue. (I used mod podge.) When turning your page back unto the glue, keep the backing paper even with the edge.

Use a brayer (shown below) to make sure all the woven areas are glued down. Then, go around the edge and glue down the ends of the vertical strips and the right ends of the horizontal strips down.

Now, you need to decide whether you want to make a border using the backing paper or cut off all the excess backing paper. I have chosen to make a border (See below.) I cut a strip of the crumpled brown paper and rubbed two different ink pads across it and glued it onto the left side of the page. I then cut the excess paper on the other three sides to the proper width. Before gluing them down, I folded them over and placed a piece of scrap paper under them so I could rub them with the ink pads. As I glued down each side, I cut the ends so they were diagonal.

A marker was used to redraw the outline of the leaf. Red glaze was used to paint the leaf. Once dry, distressing ink was used to soften and darken the glaze. Using a needle, red fibers were woven through the outer edge and tied at the corners.
Since yesterday was Memorial Day, I'm going to create a dedication page to all who have died serving our country on the opposite page. We continue to benefit from all they have given. The changing leaf falls to the ground and becomes the part of the earth which nourishes the new plant.