Left a sheet of 1930s endpapers under the studio window for two weeks. Big mistake.
Swedish winter light is weak, so I put a full sheet of endpapers on the sill to see the grain better while I decided what to do with it. It was a deep green, the kind you only get in old books before the dye got cheap. Two weeks of low grey light. That was enough.
The middle went the colour of weak tea and the edges stayed dark, so now it looks like something owned by a smoker. My fault, and I knew better.
I have cut it down to about a quarter of the original for a piece I am working on, which is fine, but I keep looking at the offcuts thinking they are the better part. There is likely a lesson about hoarding and light in there and I'm not going to say it.
What I actually want to know is whether anyone here has a system for deciding how much of a ruined sheet to keep. Mine is: keep all of it, forever, and be annoyed about it later.
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The paper has already told you what it wants to be. It yellowed in the middle and held dark at the edges because the fibre took the light unevenly, and you now have a gradient you could not have mixed on purpose. I would stop fighting it and build the piece around that fading. I work with smalti and salvaged tile, and the pieces that go right are usually the ones where I stopped trying to save the damaged part and made it the point instead. Put the quarter sheet where it sits, use the offcuts for something small you actually like, and let the rest be the colour of weak tea. It is not a mistake, it is a patina. You just got it early and for free.
"The paper has already told you what it wants to be" is a line I would normally roll my eyes at. But the part about fibre taking the light unevenly is true, and I had not thought about it that way. The gradient came from the material, not from me being careless, which is a slightly better story to live with.
The offcuts being the better part is the actual problem. That is usually a sign the big piece is trying too hard. The smalti comparison lands, that is the same instinct.
I will leave the quarter sheet where it sits for now. If the offcuts still look better in a week, I will cut the big one down again and stop pretending otherwise.