Poetic Supplies

I'm taking a class, called Poetic Cloth from Jane Dunnewold which is really fun so far, but it required me to source some new fabric from a new supplier that she suggested. Online Fabric Store (yes, that's actually the name of it). For the class I bought two fabrics to try printing with, two yards of 60" white cotton broadcloth, and 2 yards of 45" bleached cotton muslin. What an interesting picture this is for white on white, right? I tried my best and held the two fabrics up to the window. I need to wash and dry them before I actually get started on pulling prints.

These fabrics will be used along with the new and much bigger Gelli Plate that was suggested that I just invested in. The one I had was only 8x10", so buying this much larger one will make it easier to print something as big as FQ which will be more usable in quilt making. Think of this as the before picture, taken while it's pristine and untouched.

I had most of the paints, and inks on the supply list already, but I didn't have these four. I've never used a paint retarder before so I'm interested in learning how that works.

Also at The Online Fabric Store, I found two kinds of felt. In the class notes, it was suggested to try out the display of smaller works we'll be making on this sort of sturdy dark grey felt, it seemed like it would be a good thing to learn. 

And after looking all over to source it locally, I finally found a grey wool felt that I can use in the Circle Sampler. Wool is really hard to find, especially in the size that I needed. I should have just bought it fro Sue Spargo back when I bought the pattern. I had even tried buying a wool coat at GoodWill and deconstructing it, but the largest rectangle wasn't even close to big enough. Now that I have the background, I can actually start this project.

So, after adding in those 7 yards, it brings my fabric tracker up to a net inflow of 11.8 yards.

Good Advice

Some very good advice from my niece's birthday party t-shirt painting craft activity.

Painting On Fabric Paper

 Fabric Paper is all the rage these days, and we got to try making it back in May at CQFA I missed the first stage where the actual fabric and paper were combined with thinned down glue.  Basically you use any fabric, in this case just plain white cotton, and you glue down layers of papers, arranging them until you like how they look and you've fully covered the fabric.
When it completely dries, the real fun starts which is where I got to jump in.  Thankfully our workshop leader Sue had extra to play with (thanks Sue) so I got to have a try at it.

 I used craft acrylic paints, some metallic in mixed colors.  Some just brushed on with a sponge brush, but mostly I wanted texture and pattern. So I used the tools I brought with me.  Bubble wrap, carpet protectors, Duplos, lace, bamboo mats.

 The possibilities are pretty much endless, because of the combination of what papers you use and what surface design work you do on top.

 Tissue paper, wrapping paper, tissue paper clothing patterns, any interesting paper is fair game to use.

 Those circles are from a Duplo (giant sized Lego for toddlers) dipped in paint and stamped on.

 The background small dots are from carpet protectors.

Fabric paper is much stiffer than fabric of course, but it is still flexible and somewhat sew-able.  There were several examples of journal covers made with this which look like a good use of this material. There were also wall hangings, notecards and ATC's.

Many Eyes to See

Here is a card I recently made for a fellow artist journaller on a pen pal list. Pen pals, what a concept right? It is fun to have a list of people who like to make and send and receive stuff in the mail. It makes picking up the mail much more interesting which is a good thing.

This card was made by painting several metallic acrylic paints in layers. Then I tore some mulberry papers into shapes that would back up the stamped eye. This eye is one that I hand-carved a couple of years ago. Some letters cut out from a magazine that say: SEE were the last thing added. I did a bunch of stamping and writing on the inside, but I didn't feel like photographing that.

Here's how the same stamp looks when stamped on some of my hand-dyed fabric.

And how it looks when stamped on previously painted paper.
And all the eyes together. I kind of like seeing so many eyes in one place.

Unleashing The Rainbow

Time to unleash the rainbow and do some painting with some new paints. Jacquard Traditional Textiles, which I've never tried before.

I chose a piece of woven tapestry weight, yet soft upholstery free fabric. It has a nice woven-in pattern.
I started out with the lightest color first, yellow. The paint is really intense and a bit thick, so I dabbed it on and then added water.

Adding more colors and seeing how they flow together and change.

My thinking/painting face.

Almost done, and look at that muddy water. I'm liking how the pigment is gathering in some spots according to the woven design of the fabric.

And here it is all done. I was going to make ATC's with it, but I decided against it for several reasons:

• just too pretty to cut up
• a much thicker fabric than I usually use for ATC's
• kind of loosely woven (will probably shred when cut)
• the colors are too spread out to read well in ATC size.

Spoken like a true fabric hoarder huh?

Early Summer Cornucopia

Where have I been lately?

Down by the riverside, in the cool cool shade.

Marveling at what is left behind after a winter's worth of storms.

Taking inadvertent self portraits.

Eating strange concoctions like this trail mix I made up, raw almonds, raisins and raw pumpkin seeds.Watching my son, Zach play timpani and other percussion instruments in the school band 3 times in 3 weeks. He had quite the crowd of young fans at the all-district band concert, elementary school through high school all together.

Or home painting the two story high living room.
No wonder I haven't gotten much artwork done, flitting from one thing to the next is just how this season goes.

Some of My Favorite Tools

Here is one of my favorite pieces of fabric from my recent painting extravaganza. It wasn't ironed very well when I started painting , so that ended up creating cool and unexpected lines toward the bottom where the wrinkles were. This is from the paint getting stopped in a line as I sponged it on. I used the following two tools with black, gold and mustard yellow paint.

This is the type of sponge that I like to use for painting, a hydrophilic (meaning loves and attracts water) foam. It acts very differently than the usual cellulose kitchen sponge (related to the sponge printing from yesterday's post). I cut up the big sponge into smaller, more usable pieces, wet it, squeeze out the excess water, and then dip it into some paint colors and pounce,dab and/or smear the paint onto the fabric.

The second tool used to create this piece is plastic furniture carpet protectors. You can get these at the hardware store, so far I've only found these two shapes, but I have seen them in smaller sizes. I just dip them into the paint that I'm using, or sponge some paint onto the prongs and then print right onto the fabric.
I really like the orderliness of the dots along with the chaotic sponged on color.

This piece was also made with just one tool.

A smallish (3x4") piece of a styrofoam food tray, deeply incised with a ballpoint pen. I sponge the paint right onto the foam surface and then print it onto the fabric.

Another one tool piece.A thick piece of design board (like posterboard with foam in the middle), cut on one of the edges to secure a heavy string wrapped around in a pattern. It is becoming a neat object all on its own after all the times that I've used it now.

This piece was made by spongeing paint onto the fabric which is on top of bubble wrap, that gives the background texture, then the round furniture protector was used to provide all those regular dots.

Simple Sponge Stamping

Another round of painting, actually stamping with paint this time, using compressed cellulose sponges.

The sponge itself is pretty thin, about the weight of a thick card stock, very easy to cut with regular scissors. I believe I bought a package of these sponges at Trader Joe's, but Dharma Trading also carries them.
Here's my painting set-up of an ironed piece of white broadcloth, several pieces of paper sandwich wrap (like delis use), with a piece of freezer paper underneath to keep my table top dry and paint-free. I re-use the freezer paper over and over again until it gets too much paint on it. The deli paper absorbs excess paint and moisture and ends up being pretty usable itself for collage and other uses.

Here is the shape I cut out of the compressed sponge. surprise surprise a spiral. Keep it a simple shape, you're not going to get a huge amount of detail with this method.

"Just add water" and pow, look how big it is all of a sudden. Make sure to squeeze out the excess water before you continue with the paint, otherwise you'll just get a lot of smeary mess without the texture of the sponge.

To apply paint I made a small unmixed puddle of the colors I wanted to use (just plain old craft acrylics, nothing fancy or specific textile paints) on a Styrofoam tray (cheap and easy palette!) and dipped the sponge spiral into it, checking to make sure that there was paint all over the shape before stamping.

The upper left is the first stamping, you can see how the extra water bleeds out into the fabric which gives it a watercolor type of look.

In the upper right I pulled the spiral apart a bit as I set it down on the fabric to give a slightly different shape.

The lower right is just the sponge plopped down tightly curled up. A lot of easy variation between stampings.

More and more layerings of the image being built up, with mostly gold/yellow paint on top of the gold/green mixture I started with. Since you're stamping with very little paint the fabric won't get too terribly stiff, it will still be easily sewable.

Here's how it looks when it is all dry.

If you want to re-use the sponge shape again, make sure to wash it out immediately otherwise it will become stiff and unusable when the paint inside the sponge dries and hardens.

If The Shoe Fits

Here's another box that I've just finished, this time a shoe shaped paper mache' that came just plain with the red twisted paper on the top.

I covered it inside and out with Japanese origami paper and painted the edges and shoe rim with red acrylic paper.
A coat of matte medium to seal the whole thing.

It is a late birthday gift for a friend, hope she likes it!

Life Has Been Your Art

Here's the most recent altered board book that I've worked on from the round robin collaboration I'm participating in. One more book is left to work on, almost done!
This book's theme is that it is to be a book of inspirational quotes. I found a quote I liked and then chose an overall green theme as you can of course see right away.



The pages were already gessoed, so I laid down several colors of green acrylic paints, did some texturing with various papers while the paint was wet and then added some gold brushed on the edges and center of the book. There was a card that I'd saved that I cut the Redoute' flower from, which is over the top of scraps of lime green cotton/satin left over from my Halloween costume. Redoute' is one of my favorite botanical artists, if you haven't seen his work, it is definitely worth the time to check out.
On the right hand page, you can see a stamped image of a woman, some green lace, sequin waste and green cotton fabric which was stitched before being glued to the page on top of some green ribbons and a painted tag. The dots are a puffy paint which started out orange but dried to this nice greeny-gold color.


The quote says: "Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music.Your days are your sonnets." Oscar Wilde

The left page has the Redoute' flower and the fabric scraps.

Now on to working out what to put in the last board book I have left to finish...