Wednesday, December 3, 2008

How Do You Cook Your Paper?

This was a really cool project for Jake's art class. He did the writing in calligraphy and it was supposed to be funny - hence the "missteaks." (The first letter is a decorative "I".) He did a great job!

When you are done writing and you've erased your pencil marks... then the fun part begins! You burn the edges with a lighter. Then you need to brown the paper and the instructions gave four choices, holding it over an electric burner, baking it, ironing it for a while, or using tea or coffee on it. First we tried baking it. It just said to use a low heat, so we tried 215 degrees for a good 10-15 minutes, but nothing happened, then we turned it up and turned it up again, but nothing much happened.

So we tried the burner method and Ta Da! It worked! The whole thing made our house stink but it turned out really cool. After you are done cooking it, you then turn it over and rub oil all over it to make it look like parchment. Pretty cool project.










He thinks he's so funny pulling a sly one on Mom and hiding his face during the shutter lag time :)

3 comments:

Kara said...

That is way awesome! And he did a very good job with the writing! I would never do that! I'm sorry that it stunk up the house though!

Kathi said...

Way cool Jake!

Jana said...

Love the calligraphy! That class was one of my favorites but we never did cool projects like this! He did a fantastic job! I'm so jealous you got to play with fire (burning the edges).