Paper Towels Transformed

Last Saturday my husband and I participated in a Jewelry making workshop at a local arts organization. Neither of us are jewelry people but he had his reasons why he thought this would be fun. Also, trying something new is often beneficial, even if the reason why is not immediately apparent.

The artist who taught the class, Kim Turner, demonstrated how to use paper towels and food coloring to form the base for a piece of jewelry; sort of low tech tie dying.  The idea is, after the paper towel dries, it can be attached to a base (Kim gave us brass shapes that could be turned into necklaces or earrings) and embellished further using the tie-dyed patterns as points of inspiration.  The two towels on the left are my husbands; both my towels turned into one color but he managed to keep colors separated.  The reason the one towel is smaller is because he used the other half on the brass base.  Since many people did turn their creations into necklaces and earrings, there were plenty of things to use for embellishment such as beads, chains, etc. The most popular thing to use were paint pens, especially the metallic ones. Here are our results.

At first I was going to turn these into pins (I do like pins). And I still may do that but I also like the look of them mounted on the one paper towel.

I can see possibilities of using this technique with some high quality paper and watercolor or acrylic wash. I can also see this as a great activity to do with children: meaning the dying the paper towel part.   So thanks to Kim and the people at ArtsPlus for making this workshop happen.