Use your stash idea

Happy Sunday crafters! 

I have a weakness for beautiful papers and often grab a pad or a rice paper just because I like the look of it, not knowing how I will use it. Then it lays undisturbed in my stash because I cannot bear to cut into that beautiful paper! Sounds familiar?

The A4 Stamperia rice paper below (Blue Dream from the Colorful Life collection DFSA4746) is one of these that I didn't know what to do with, until I had the idea of using it on a mouse mat. 

My old mouse mat was deteriorating and the top layer was lifting up at the corners. 

I realised that if the top layer was plasticised, underneath was a white paper layer that could accept glue. And the size was a little shorter than A4 but I could still fit sky and sea from the rice paper!

To provide the necessary glide for the mouse and protect the top layer, the rice paper had to be treated in some way. Instead of gel medium, varnish or similar, I thought laminating would be the best idea. Of course since I needed to glue the image to the paper layer of the mat I couldn't laminate as normal, that is to say both sides. So I sandwiched my rice paper between one layer of laminating and a page of copy paper both slightly bigger than my rice paper.

Then it's a matter of cutting out the margins to take out the copy paper and applying a good amount of glue or gel medium to the mat and smoothing the laminated rice paper on top. For this project I used matt laminating pouches rather than glossy.

And here's the result:

I have been using my mat for a while now and enjoy looking at that view everyday as well as having something that is unique and made by my fair hands. Really pleased with the result so much so  I upgraded another mat in the same way!!!

Thanks for coming by,
 Craftyfield