Spray Painting Accidentally Created Patterned Paper

My mission was to use up all my old spray paints since I rarely use them now that I have found some that smell less, are easier to clean up, and have the exact colors I love.  I covered the table with a painting tarp, grabbed my boxes of paints, and even had a little helper who cleared out as soon as I pulled out the paper.  I sprayed a whole lot…there is lots of paint in a can.  You can see some of the other papers I made and more about my destashing in this post.

My intention was to make patterned papers with my Linked stencil.  Using spray paint is just about the same as using spray inks, it just sprays farther so I spray paint outside.  That helps with the smell too. What I hadn’t intended was the gift on the clean up paper…

Since this was oil based spray paints, if I let it build up and dry on the stencil, it is pretty darn hard to get off.   To keep the build up from happening, I cleaned off the stencil by putting it down on another paper whenever it gets loaded with paint.  My goal was to clean but that act of cleaning accidentally created a pattern that I fell in love with once I

After a while, the build up of pattern catches my eye and I start to add more color and pattern with intention.

Just so you know, if you try to spray paint and take a photo at the exact same time, notice where the nozzle is pointed.  Makes a difference when you point the nozzle at the paper…As you can tell in the photo below, it sprayed a bit off to the side…Oops!

Once I knew where the nozzle was pointing, I added more yellow around the edges.  Be sure to stop back for my next post because I’m going to be using this paper in an art journal page. See you then!