IDEAS Customizing Japanese Fans

Summer has arrived, bringing with it beautiful, warm sunny days and sometimes, therefore, the need to cool off! What's better than a Japanese fan for this? With the help of a few creative supplies and imagination, it doesn't take much to make this simple fan a real decorative object.

In this new article, I wanted to offer you several ideas for dressing and personalizing your fan and creating a decorative element in its own right, which will bring a Japanese touch to your decoration!

When we received these fans ( uchiwa in Japanese) at the store, I immediately imagined them dressed in Japanese paper. So I had fun composing decorations around the patterns of our Japanese papers by sketching some designs of my desires!

To dress these pretty fans, you will need to collect a little material: paint, watercolor or acrylic, some scraps of Japanese paper and crepe paper , glue , a pair of scissors and a brush . You are free to complete with other creative supplies as you wish!

For this first model, I wanted to apply, over the entire surface of the fan, a large piece of one of our Japanese papers with “ Mountains and Rivers ” patterns. I really fell in love with this pattern, full of small details and graphic elements. I also had fun imagining a composition around the mountain motif of this Japanese paper with other Japanese papers in similar colors by varying the cut-out shapes.

For this second model, I wanted to play the game of contrast by using cold and warm tones, different shades of blue and red. I also chose to cut out “camellia” patterns from one of our Japanese paper to make decorative elements in their own right to dress my fan.

To dress this fan, I chose to highlight its branches by applying thin layers of diluted watercolor to create a soft striped pattern.

I then cut out several camellia patterns, present on one of our Japanese papers. I deliberately left a small colored border, created using the background of the paper, to highlight this flower pattern.

And finally, to add a contrasting element to my fan, I made a thin red border using crepe which I delicately stretched as I glued it. It recalls the pistils of camellias while providing a nice finish to my fan.

For this third and final model, my favorite, I wanted to re-create a decor using one of our “Mountains and Rivers” Japanese papers! I cut out some mountain ranges to which I added several colored shapes.

Before composing my decor with my different cut-out elements, I applied a coat of yellow acrylic paint from the Ressource brand, slightly diluted to have a transparent result. I then added two colored bias bindings, made from blue crepe paper.