SPLAT BOX PAPERS

What is a splat box? Any sort of box, usually a cardboard one, that you put something in before you spray it with ink or glue, to prevent overspray all over your desk.

I have two sections of cardboard box that I cut so that they are open on one side. They slot together to form a box with four sides, and I can slide them together or apart for a smaller or larger containment area. The main advantage of this is that the splat box doesn’t take up so much room on the shelf when it’s fully slotted together.

Over time, I have laid successive layers of kitchen paper in the bottom to soak up excess ink. There are now quite a few layers that won’t come out as they are stuck with spray glue to the bottom of the inner box. I really need to keep a separate splat box for glue, as the ink soaks into the paper and makes gorgeous useable pieces, and it’s a pain if they rip when you try and separate them.

Some time ago I made some collage paper by printing circles of white acrylic paint on tissue paper, dipping the plastic lid of a jar in the paint and printing it off. When you stick these down onto your page with gel medium, the background tissue virtually disappears and you are left with the circles. Here are some examples.

Firstly, the circles as I originally printed them.

I put this sheet into the splat box in order to coffee-stain it. I have a spray bottle with coffee in it, which is handy for doing small quantities of coffee-staining. What I had not anticipated was that the water in the coffee would reactivate the ink on the kitchen paper in the bottom of the splat box! What came out was brilliant, so I was happy with this bit of serendipity.

Here are some of these coffee-stained, accidentally ink-stained circles on a page.

I really liked this effect and will certainly do it again.

In the meantime, I noticed today that the paper in the splat box had “matured” nicely and was pretty much covered, making it a useable paper for projects, so I removed it (it was a bit stuck down but it came away OK with a bit of care).

I had thought that kitchen paper was only 2-ply, but it turned out to be 3-ply, so I carefully separated the layers. The middle layer seemed to suffer most, being stuck in quite a few places, but I managed to separate it more or less intact. Here are the three layers.

They are absolutely glorious! How anyone could contemplate simply throwing them away, I don’t know.

Here they are individually, showing both top and bottom surfaces. They are pretty similar but there are subtle differences.

First, the top layer. This is the top surface, what I was seeing when I looked into the splat box.

Around the dark area in the centre is some gold spray that I added when I was making the background mat for the beaded skeleton leaf.

The reverse side of this top layer.

The centre layer, top surface.

You can see that there is some damage on the right-hand side.

The bottom surface of this layer.

Finally, the bottom layer – top surface.

The bottom surface.

The top and bottom surfaces of each layer do look pretty similar; just a mirror image, but there are subtle differences.

I love how the texture of the kitchen paper has been picked out by the inks. The texture is gorgeous. The papers are quite delicate and thin, but I think they will make fantastic additions to collages.

This is what the inside of the splat box looks like now – I can’t separate these sheets or remove them, but no matter!

This is the latest piece of kitchen paper from the splat box which is not yet “matured” enough to use, but you can see it already has potential. First, the top surface.

The underside.

You can see how the ink has picked out the emossed pattern of the kitchen paper. Such a great effect! This sheet will also separate into three layers. The current roll of kitchen paper unfortunately doesn’t have this circular design embossed on it.