Project by Corinne Okada Tokara of Cupertino, Calif.
Corinne has found a pastime that is playful and unique, while paying homage to her Asian heritage. Using Asian rice paper and handmade fibers, she creates an adorable wire and fiber frog.
Materials:
wire twisters
needle nose pliers with cutting edge
20-gauge silver-plated copper wire
goggles or glasses
white household glue
scissors
polymer glaze
stick/chopstick for pressing paper in tight areas
rice paper (mulberry paper) or handmade paper*
*if making hand made paper you will need:
blender
coagulant
pigment
color fixative
large dishwashing tub of water
paper scraps or cooked mulberry fiber
papermaking screen (frame with screen netting stretched across)
Steps:
1. Begin with a sketch on paper (usually a line drawing on white paper or on paper from a brown paper bag). Sometimes this sketch is a color study as well; you will need to know what color paper to make.
2. For the wire form: Twist silver-plated copper wire is twisted with an electrician's wire twisters so that wire is double thickness. Cut off sections of twisted wire at about 3 feet each.
3. With needle nose pliers, for the eyes and head of frog. Form the body of the frog next. No soldering is used, just twisting of wire. Wear woodshop goggles to protect the eyes when working with wire.
4. To make the paper (outside): Fill a plastic dish tub half full of water and add some Kozo fibers (mulberry) or torn soaked sheets of prepared paper pulp. Add powdered color pigment to pulp. Add color fixer or retention aid. (This fixer is made by taking 1/4 tsp. retention powder and 1 quart of warm water; stir and let sit for a half an hour. This to be done ahead of time).
5. Next add the coagulant. This chemical mixture makes water more viscous so that you can make thin, even sheets of paper. (To prepare the coagulant, 2 tbs. of coagulant powder is mixed with 4 gallons of water and is left to sit over night. Only 1 to 2 cups needed per 5 gallons of pulp.)
6. Add bits of candy wrappers, newspaper and other scraps to tub. With a paper pulling screen, pull a sheet of paper by dragging the screen under the water mixture and then pulling up. Some of the mush will be stuck to the screen. Let the water drain a little and then flip and press the screen onto a large flat wooden board that is propped upright, in the sun. With a sponge, press on the screen and transfer paper pulp to large board. It will dry in a day; then peel off as a sheet of paper.
7. To attached the paper to the wire form: A sheet of paper is laid on top of a wire section of the frog to be covered, say an hourglass shape on the back. Cut the paper to roughly the hourglass shape but a bit larger. Cut slits into the paper to form tabs and apply household liquid glue. The tabs are then wrapped around the wire to hold the paper in place. This process is used to attach the paper to the frog.
8. Not all of the wire form is papered. To leave the sculpture a bit translucent, some patches are left unpapered. A bit of colorful produce netting (the kind that onions and avocados come in) is scrunched up and placed inside the body of the frog to give it some color and texture.
9. Finally, glaze the frog with a polymer resin, a plastic coating. Frogs are good luck in Japanese culture. They bring prosperity.
Corrine remembers receiving a small ceramic frog when she was little and being told to put it in her change purse. Just as live frogs multiply in great numbers, the little ceramic frog was supposed to help her money multiply rapidly.
Website: www.okadadesign.com
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