Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 - Glue method Part 2

Creating silk paper and other fibre films   
Method 2 - Glue method

This method, with many variations is covered in the following references;
1, 2, 3, 4, to 14.  (Click on the "References I use" page at top right of blog)

Today's sample is going to be made from tussah silk tops in shades of green.

Here  is the bottom cloth laid out.  I used kitchen wipes.

Above shows the first layer of tops.  In this sample, I used shorter tufts.

I added some dried leaves and flowers from a boutique herb tea mix.

Then the top layer of tussah silk went on.

Then I laid the top cloth on top of that.

I added boiling water - just enough to wet all the layers.

Then burnished the layers with the back of a spoon to get an even distribution of the hot water.

I rolled up all the layers carefully.

Here, I addeddiluted medium to my tray and rolled the layers in it, but decided -

It was probably better to immerse the whole thing in a bowl of diluted medium.  (I used about 1 to 5 dilution)

After squeezing out all the excess medium, I straigtened and flattened the layers on my tray.

I peeled back the kitchen wipe to reveal the lovely glossy fibres!

I actually put this between somebaking paer and gave it a quick iron before drying further.

It did bot take too long to dry and the finished silk paper was beautiful.  The dried tea added just the right amount of texture and the paperfabric was very flexible and fabric like. This piece offers me lots of possibilities, I just have to decide which use it will be put to.  But I suppose I could just make some more!
In the next blog, I am going to look at some more experimental stuff with this method.