Paper Snowflakes

Who remembers cutting out paper snowflakes?  The Winter Lettering Challenge for Dec. 5 was "paper snowflakes".  I didn't even look on YouTube to try to remember how to do this, I just dived right in, relying on memory.

I first used a piece of pretty red and gold art paper.  Sounded good in theory.  But the design was so busy, you could hardly see the snowflake pattern.  In fact, I flipped it over to the back side and was going to glue it to the page that way.

But in the meantime, I decided to try other papers.  I had a box of filters that were already a circle shape.  I'm not sure what they are for, the box says Laboratory Use.  They were a little thick, and I thought they would hold up to wet media pretty good.  That may be true, but the thickness made it hard to fold and cut.  I also had some coffee filters I wanted to try.

After cutting the lab filters, I used the stem part of a spray ink to dab color onto the filter.  I unfolded it some in order to get to all the areas.

Even after adding color and spraying water on it, it looked like it needed to go back to the lab, as if it had bacteria growing on it.

Next up, the coffee filter.  Thinner and easier to flatten, fold and cut.  We're onto something.

I sprayed the inks directly onto the paper.  When I unfolded it, there were still a lot of white spots, so sprayed more ink and a good amount of water on it until all areas were covered.

I unfolded it and blotted the excess water and ink.  It turned out to be my favorite.  Even though it is bigger than my page, that's the one I used.

Fun little blast from the past and reliving a childhood activity!