Bite Bakery: Bag Material
I decided that it was time to get a little more hands on with this bakery brief and have a bit of a stock test. I recently found this company that sells paper made from elephant and rhino dung and I bought a selection of papers from them. Cheap as chips and quickly delivered. They do seed paper but only in A5 sheets, which is fairly rubbish for using for anything but quite useful for doing fold tests and the like. Anyway.
I didn't use a net for these bag designs, in truth I find those really awkward and far too complicated to make what they do. I just wrapped the paper around a box shape and closed one end like you would wrap a present. Then add the side folds and it collapses down flat quite nicely. I may post a little tutorial just to show my process. Way easier than using a net. I used nets for bags when I was doing my Homebase brief last year and I spent way too long making each bag when I made each one in less than a minute this time around.
This paper is made from elephant dung. It's mainly an off white with little flecks in it, the photo doesn't really do it justice. To the touch it's just like thin card, it folds nicely, though it really isn't obvious as to what it is without it being said. 'This bag is made from elephant dung' or something like that and I don't really want to go along that route.
This stock is a handmade paper bought at the Salts Mill during my trip with Carl at the end of last year. It's nice and textured, yellow with sort of orangey flecks inside of it. It's quite thick and has a sort of flock-like texture to it, it's very soft and springy and doesn't really fold crisply.
The above bag is made from stock that I've kept for some time. It's less like paper and more like a mesh of threads made from banana fiber. It's very rough to the touch and can be quite sharp. In truth, it stabbed me a fair few times while I was making it into a bag. It doesn't fold down all that well and double sided tape doesn't seem to hold it closed too well. It was awkward to work with, and while I adore it as a texture, it's really not practical and can be quite painful to handle. So, absolutely unsuitable. The texture of it is amazing but it's really not something that is practical in a printed design. I bought this back on my Foundation course when I was all about sketchbooks as a piece of design in themselves. In a way, I kind of miss working like that, but I'm a much better designer now and don't get bogged down in presenting the back up work as aesthetically as the product.
Paper made from coffee filters. It has a very slight coffee scent to it and has a marbled effect on the surface. Again it's very thin, about as thin as normal printer paper and folds quite nicely. Being that it's very thin, it's not very strong and couldn't really hold much. Also, the company only sells it in sheets of A4, which is rubbish!
Cannot remember for the life of me what paper this is, I'll have a look when I get home later.
Same company again, this time the paper is embedded with grass. Not grass seeds,which is what I was looking for, but blades of grass. It has quite a nice, earthy and natural feel to it and is as thin as computer paper, so folds down nice and crisply but isn't very strong.
The above bag is made from paper embedded with wildflower seeds, which is what I was originally looking for. I would have loved some filled with grass seed but apparently they only sell that in America and the shipping costs would murder me. Ellie Poo Paper only had sheets of it in A5, but I found a wonderful seller on Ebay who sells it in sheets of larger than A2 straight off the deckle. Very useful as we can only print on it on sheets of A3 at the least down in the digital dungeon. It's very thick so I was quite surprised when James said that he could print on it. Anyway. It's not the cheapest thing in the world and it's quite thick and very strong. Constructing a bag out of it was quite a feat as it kept springing back and trying to hit me in the face, though when it was done I thought that it looked quite effective.
It's quite a lumpy stock, obviously as it's full of seeds, but it looks and feels very handmade. When I was making this bag instead of having a straight cut edge at the top I would leave the deckle edge there and keep it quite rough. I made handles out of raffia, in truth quite a weak material unless you use stacks of it.
It was mentioned in the crit that it doesn't look like something that would be cheap to produce, and it's not, so while it looks really nice and quite 'eco' I either need to scrap it in favour of something more finance friendly or change the brief and make it a really high end, expensive bakery.
As seen in the bottom image I also played briefly with the idea of instead of printing on the bag, just printing little tags to hang from the bag that doubles as a business card.
I didn't use a net for these bag designs, in truth I find those really awkward and far too complicated to make what they do. I just wrapped the paper around a box shape and closed one end like you would wrap a present. Then add the side folds and it collapses down flat quite nicely. I may post a little tutorial just to show my process. Way easier than using a net. I used nets for bags when I was doing my Homebase brief last year and I spent way too long making each bag when I made each one in less than a minute this time around.
Paper made from coffee filters. It has a very slight coffee scent to it and has a marbled effect on the surface. Again it's very thin, about as thin as normal printer paper and folds quite nicely. Being that it's very thin, it's not very strong and couldn't really hold much. Also, the company only sells it in sheets of A4, which is rubbish!
Same company again, this time the paper is embedded with grass. Not grass seeds,which is what I was looking for, but blades of grass. It has quite a nice, earthy and natural feel to it and is as thin as computer paper, so folds down nice and crisply but isn't very strong.
The above bag is made from paper embedded with wildflower seeds, which is what I was originally looking for. I would have loved some filled with grass seed but apparently they only sell that in America and the shipping costs would murder me. Ellie Poo Paper only had sheets of it in A5, but I found a wonderful seller on Ebay who sells it in sheets of larger than A2 straight off the deckle. Very useful as we can only print on it on sheets of A3 at the least down in the digital dungeon. It's very thick so I was quite surprised when James said that he could print on it. Anyway. It's not the cheapest thing in the world and it's quite thick and very strong. Constructing a bag out of it was quite a feat as it kept springing back and trying to hit me in the face, though when it was done I thought that it looked quite effective.
It's quite a lumpy stock, obviously as it's full of seeds, but it looks and feels very handmade. When I was making this bag instead of having a straight cut edge at the top I would leave the deckle edge there and keep it quite rough. I made handles out of raffia, in truth quite a weak material unless you use stacks of it.
It was mentioned in the crit that it doesn't look like something that would be cheap to produce, and it's not, so while it looks really nice and quite 'eco' I either need to scrap it in favour of something more finance friendly or change the brief and make it a really high end, expensive bakery.
As seen in the bottom image I also played briefly with the idea of instead of printing on the bag, just printing little tags to hang from the bag that doubles as a business card.
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