INFUSIONS MINI-ALBUM – THE REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT UFO
There are too many UFOs in my studio. UnFinished Objects. Every now and then I have a blitz and finish some of them, only to find they have been replaced by more. Does anyone else have aliens in their studio?
Infusions
Back in 2017 I bought the complete set of Infusions by PaperArtsy.
If anyone has used Brushos, they are very similar in the way they are used, but the colours are more interesting, and they have added walnut fragments. If you blot them off or dry them with a heat tool, you just get the colours, but if you let them dry naturally, the walnut fragments create gorgeous grungey brown marks. I think Infusions are a lot better than Brushos because they suit the sort of work I like doing best, which is the grungey vintage look.
Some of the following pictures are from back in 2017 and the rest are from today’s work.
Infusions Mini-Album revived
Since I have been in book binding mode recently with my DrawAwesome album, I felt in the mood to get this ancient UFO out and finally settle down to completing it.
I began it in 2017. There was quite a lot going on in my life at the time, with Mum’s death at the end of the previous year and making a big interactive album about her life, the death of our two beloved elderly kitties in early summer 2017 and the arrival of our two new kittens (now 8 years old!) later in the year. I was also dealing with serious health issues. The Infusions mini-album got put away and other projects took precedence and I went completely off the boil with it.
I had made all the pages and planned the whole thing, and thought I’d made more progress than I actually had. When I got the box down today I discovered how much work still remained to be done.
Toilet paper tube mini-albums
Toilet paper tubes make an excellent foundation for small books. You squash them, and you have a ready-made page with a pocket for a tag.
I had already prepared all of these, painting the edges inside and out with black gesso and flattening them in my flower press.
Plan for the mini-album
Infusions are incredibly versatile. You can use them like Brushos – either sprinkling them on dry paper and spritzing them with water, or on wet paper and letting them do their thing. A tiny amount goes a long way. The water makes the granules explode into uncontrollable bursts of colour. You can also mix a little with water and paint as you would watercolours. You can sprinkle them on various different wet substrates such as gesso or gel medium. All the effects are very different.
I wanted to make an album as a sampler of how one could use these amazing little powders in so many different ways. It would be a useful reference for many projects, as well as being a fun and attractive book.
Not one album but three
It soon became clear that I would have far too many pages for a single album, so I divided them into three. They would eventually be bound in a large cover, one above the other.
Sampling the colours
The first step was to make a series of pages showing all the colours in the two sets of Infusions.
On these sample pages, I dried off one half and left the other half to dry naturally, to show the difference. The pages were cut to the size of the flattened toilet roll tubes and stuck back to back in order, leaving one short end open for the hidden hinge binding. I wrote on each one the name of the particular Infusion.
The tubes were each covered with a smaller piece, and acted as title pages for the different ways of using the Infusions.
I also cut some smaller pieces and punched holes in the top to form tags. These were to go inside the tubes, giving details of each category, and instructions on how to achieve the various effects.
Here is an example of one of the tags – the first one, which goes in the title page (tube) of Book 1. (I see I have got the L & R reversed!!)
Here are some of the samples I made at the time, using different methods and different media to achieve varying effects.
Once all the pages were done, I bundled them together in order into the three books. This is where I left them.
Returning to the work
I cut small strips of black card and folded them to form the hinges for the binding for each book.
Book 1, on the right, has some tags inserted, which are protruding so that they wouldn’t get stuck inside the tubes when I applied the wet glue for the binding. Eventually they will have some sort of attachment through the hole to pull them out with. You can see the hidden hinge binding on the book on the left.
Here are the three books bound, wth the instructions I made for myself back in 2017. I still have to add a title on Book 3.
An example of some pages in Book 1 and a tag.
There is more work to be done than I anticipated. I thought all I had to do was bind the three books and create the cover for them all. There are still quite a few tags to be done and instructions to be written.
I am pleased to have got this UFO revived again, and look forward to finishing it at last. I have been thinking about Infusions recently, that I should get them out again and use them, because it’s been quite a while since they’ve seen the light of day.
Here’s an example of some sheets I made, with my “mask and spray” technique with inks and Infusions.
