A stretched canvas
A sheet of handmade paper of medium weight with leaves or flower inclusions - texture is important here.
Golden Heavy Gel Medium and GAC 400 medium (other brands of gel medium are ok, but the GAC 400 has special qualities and is only made by Golden)
Large, medium, and small brushes and water.
Deckled edges will make things easier as we go along, so the first thing is to wet-tear the handmade paper. Lay the canvas face down on the paper and line it up with one corner of the handmade paper, leaving enough of a margin to go up over the edge of the canvas and across most of the frame area on the back. Draw the remaining two sides of the rectangle with a brush dipped in clean water. Use enough water to soak through the paper.
When the paper is soaked through, gently pull it apart in a sideways direction. This will separate the fibers and leave a nice deckle edge.
Work your way carefully around any leaves or fibers that cross the line. Use a scissors to cut tough fibers that will not easily pull apart.
Your materials should look like this when you are finished tearing.
Using the same wet tearing technique, remove excess paper at each corner. The handmade paper is pliable enough that it will be easy to make a neat corner later if this extra is not in the way.
Using a large brush, apply a generous coating of Heavy Gel Medium to the entire top of the canvas. You want the heavy gel medium because it has a lot of holding power and will keep the paper in place where you want it.
If your handmade paper has one side that you like more than the other, lay that side face down on a clean sheet of scrap paper. Set the canvas face down and centered on the paper, and press down along the frame.
Then, with a bone folder or back of a spoon, burnish the entire exposed canvas area firmly.
Turn the canvas right side up again and crease the paper along the edges of the canvas frame so you can see where the edges are (you can’t really see them in the picture).
You will work with just the top surface at first and the sides later.
Pour GAC 400 into a plastic container wide enough for your big brush.
Without waiting for the heavy gel medium to dry, soak the paper with GAC 400. Do only the top surface as far as the edges at this point.
You don’t want the heavy gel to dry first because the thin bodied GAC must soak through the paper evenly. This determines the look of the glaze we will apply later.
Allow the canvas to dry completely, and then, using the same steps with heavy gel and GAC 400 medium, wrap the paper around each edge and onto the back. You may have to do this in a couple of stages so there is a dry edge to hold onto at all times. Make your corners nice and neat by patting the soaked paper edges into place with the brush or your fingers. Set the finished canvas aside to dry completely while you go about preparing some of the other elements of the assemblage.
