Korean Traditional Hanji Crafts

I recently took a hanji class (in Korea). Hanji is the traditional Korean mulberry paper, the better pieces handmade, that has texture, is fibrous, and is commonly used in many kinds of art -- calligraphy, paintings, crafts and more. The hanji class was one month long, met four times a week, and positively enlightened me on how people can be very clever with paper.

I had so much fun with being creative that I decided my mom would love doing some craftsy things too, so I bought several smallish square boxes -- guess I'll call them candy boxes -- and various kinds of paper. I measured and clipped hanji to cover piece by piece the sides and insides of the boxes, and then after I got to the States, I invited mom's friends over for a craft-day party. 

Of course I had to model how to use the paper and so made a tissue box out of a dark red for my mom's living room, a matching octagonal candy dish with hanja-style hanji (hanja is words written in Chinese script) and also a red jewelry box. They really accent her blue living room and no one has anything like the pieces around! Mom's friends just oohed and aahed, so they got excited about "box making" and were ready to create their small hanji masterpieces. 

Absolutely love the turtle clasp!

So then mom and her two friends made their pieces. I just supervised like my hanji teacher had done for me, and helped them apply the correct layers of glue to harden the box and other tricks like tearing off excess hanji in corners to prevent the paper from drying bulked up. They couldn't finish their boxes in just one hour because when applying the glossy coating, the boxes must be dry. So a few hours after they left I glossed the boxes up with two coatings of gloss. I must say, the boxes turned out really well. One friend was particularly gentle when applying coats of glue -- she brush stroked so gently and carefully because she didn't want to leave any brush impressions in the glue, so I was careful to not leave any impressions when I applied the coating.  

Then I got creative. Instead of just using Korean motifs with the Korean paper, I chose to mix things up a bit -- Korean paper with Western nature motifs and bleached to a rustic antique look. Gave it away to another friend at church but mom's friends were there and while they had previously been all excited about making red wrinkled hanji tissue boxes like I had made mom, they then became more interested in making a rustic country tissue box.

I used woodsies to make the motifs. Kind of cool!

And then I got super creative and wanted to design my own hanji-like table lamp. Instead of using glossed cardboard for framing, I used some Baltic plywood, which is somewhat light and thin, to make the frame. Bought two 15watt craft lights that had switches for turning the lamp on and off, and used a very thick old hangar to secure the two lamp bulbs in fixed hanging position. Took me a few hours to cut my pattern (turned out really rustic), and splice my two lights into one strand. Then it was a matter of just using various kinds of glue to put the hanji on correctly. Not as elegant as I planned but I rather like the rustic look. Had no use for it so gave it away at a church party as the grand prize. The winner seemed quite happy!

With my scroll saw I cut out the Baltic plywood lamp frame.

My Baltic plywood framed hanji lamp. The bulbs were made with hanji paper-machete-ed over two balloons. After the bulbs dried I painted them. Stain would have been better but didn't have any on hand. 

The large pin-holes in the bulbs were made with a darning needle poked through the skin of the bulb.