Only One Halloween Card

 

I had big plans to make a bunch of Halloween cards with my CriCut to send out, but the power outage threw a monkey wrench into the works. So here's the one and only card that I got done. In the original design that I was using, the background yellow was a printed piece of paper. I thought the plain yellow just didn't work.

So out came the ink stamping pad. I used the end of a plasticized cork to make these variegated rough circles. I think it worked!

Yes, better.

And next year, I hope that there will be a few more cards made.

From the Archive Binder

 When I was filing away my ATCs, I found these two pieces from way back when. The first is a 4" square quilt let (yes I've always been making these!) that I'd stamped with a wooden stamp. Thought it was interesting how well this sentiment fits the current political zeitgeist.

This rubber stamp of the smiling woman I always called "Marge" not sure why, but that's the name that stuck. I also found this political sentiment to be something to re-consider.

Printing Chickens

 I recently found this chicken wood-block at a local store and just couldn't resist, because, chickens!  I got out the Dr. p.h. Martin's ink and dry ink stamping pad that I like to use for stamping and some nice tight pima cotton and tried it.  Didn't work too well, as you can see below on the left.
The stamp isn't very even on the stamping surface, so I put a layer of quilt batting underneath to give more to press into and make all of the stamp surface come into contact with the fabric.  I also used my trusty brayer to get the ink onto the stamp because the stamp pad didn't work too well either.

 It did much better printing with the quilt batting underneath.

 And the third print?

Hmmm, still pretty spotty.  The ink was gathering in these deep cut out parts in the design.  I think I'll either thicken the ink, or use fabric paint next time in hopes that it will just stick on the stamping surface.
Not giving up, I need more chickens...

Gather Gather

 Gather Gather - the daily collage from December 4th consisting of a magazine picture of a bee, paint sample strip, selvedge edge numbers, stamped words, blue tissue paper.
Words in the binding are: Oh! To Have Such A Purpose!

A little surrealism for the December 5th collage.  A magazine picture of a chicken foot and a kudzu covered structure, colored pencil and magazine words ALIEN INVADERS.  Words in the binding are: 

Aliens have to come from somewhere.  What do aliens call home?

WaterWord

Yesterday I showed you a small detail of this quilt that is on the show postcard for the California Fiber Artists "California Currents" show at the EBMUD gallery, and today here is a picture of the whole thing.  This is my piece called WaterWord.

 And some more detail shots so you can see some of the stamping and writing I did on the quilt surface.  This was all done after the quilting was completed.

 I used a several times over-dyed piece of muslin that had some writing in sharpie which still showed through to the other side a bit, so it had a textured look already along the edge.  I wrote over those showing through markings with several different pens with the phrase
"The Word For The World Is Water".

Here's the artist statement that I wrote that explains the choice of those words:


Artist Statement:

The Word for the World is Water which is written several times on the piece is a take on the Ursula LeGuin short story title "The Word for the World is Forest". It just came to mind as I worked on this piece, I found that I liked the rhythm of the words and how they looked as I wrote them flowing along the edge representing a shoreline. The squares and rectangles represent the human imposed water systems and controls. The natural state of water and the managed state of water both working together to sustain humanity.

This quilt contains hand-dyed muslin, quilting cottons and upholstery weight fabrics.

Finally A Chance To Letterpress

 I forgot to post about the letterpress experience I had at Maker Faire this year.  I had always wanted to try it every time we went but the booth was always mobbed, this time I lucked out.  It was so fun to get to try the machine out, and then they had it all set up so you could make a little book with a simple stab signature binding.  How do you like the awesome mix of fonts on that one little print?
Anyways, it was super fun, and now I see what the big deal is, what a handy little machine a letterpress really is. (puts on the exceedingly long and out-of-hand *someday wants list*).  Thank you San Francisco Center for the Book for having this fun project to do.

 I added to my alphabet stamps collection recently with this lovely set of upper-case cursive.

I tried them out in my newly-made, letter-pressed book.  In case you can't read it, I stamped: Do It Anyways and Art Comes To Those Who Wait.  Not my best stamping job ever (I need to remember to check the corners of stamps to wipe off the ink), but I like the look of the font a whole lot.  Above it you can see the paper I put down to avoid getting ink on my Olfa cutting mat,  after using it for a while, this paper looks super cool with all kinds of stamps and paint all over it.  Yes of course I save it to use in collage and altered books projects.

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.

Sometimes Everything Looks Like A Giraffe

Third in a series for the Six Word Memoir journal quilt project that I am participating in all year long.

This was all made with scraps near the top of my current pile. Note that none of them were cut to these shapes for this quilt. Used "as is" tends to be the way I work with scraps for collage-y stuff like this. Once that black piece got put down on the background, the six words immediately popped into my head:

"Sometimes Everything Looks Like A Giraffe"

A truism if I've ever thought of one!The words were stamped with blue fabric dye ink with one of my smaller alphabet stamp sets.I am not the best at stamping words, getting the spacing right, even "close enough" is hard for me to achieve. So my "close enough" is prety darned flexible as you can see here. c'mon S catch up with Look!

I wonder if anyone (not naming names to see if she does!) will recognize her scraps that I used here? I love it that people give me such wonderful goodies to work with!

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.

The Eyes Have It

I recently uncovered a bag of stuff I'd purchased from Dharma Trading last November to make holiday presents with (oops!), several blank scarves, toddler shirts, etc. And this stamping stuff too. Wasn't up to dyeing the wearable blanks, so I chose the stamping setup. I tried out a new stamping ink from Dr. Ph Martin and a different Speedball Speedy-Stamp carving block. I've never used the pink kind before, I found it to be nice and easy to carve (maybe too easy), and not crumbly like the white version.

Before I started any carving I first loaded up the dry stamp pads with the ink.

It takes a while for it to really soak in and get nice and juicy like a stamp pad should be.

I wasn't in a very good mood so I drew an angry face with a hat on the large piece, just with a pencil. Then carved it out with the Speedball Cutting Set using a fine tip and then larger tip, and an exacto blade for the biggest areas.

This is how the stamp looks after being inked up and printed. I think I might mount this to some wood because it is pretty large 3x5" and very flexible, I wouldn't want it to get flexed the wrong way and broken.

And here is how the first stamping went. The stamp pad was a little uneven at first, thus the blotches. I've learned the hard way that you always, always, always have to do a test stamp first if you're stamping on something critical and un-replaceable.

Then I felt like making a smaller stamp after that big one, so I took one of my leftover white pieces and carved these worried eyes. This is what happens when I make art while listening to NPR.

Worry Worry Worry! or Angry Angry Angry!

You can see how crumbly the white stuff is compared to the pink. Just like one of those old erasers. It is a lot firmer though, and very different to carve.

Here is how the orange ink printed up on the goldenrod fabric. Pretty nice and subtleThe last stamp of the day that I carved was a single eye. Not worried or angry just alert and intense.Here it is stamped out on part of an old sheet in the turquoise blue.
I like how the single stamp almost looks like a pair of eyes when stamped at the right distance apart. I think I'll be using this stamped fabric on the back of a shirt, so I can keep a good lookout when I'm out and about.

Three More, Finally

Sheesh! This took a while, a long while to get these pictures up. Not sure what is going on with Blogger, I haven't had a picture loading problem since, well, I don't remember when, it has been a while. So I shouldn't complain too much about a free service, eh?!
So these closer up pictures will show you some of the quilting that I did on "Black Hole Sun". Also, you can see in the yellow/pink fabric some stamped images, those are from Sherrill Kahn's ImpressMeNow. Her rubber stamps are super high quality and aimed towards stamping on fabric. I stamped my batiked fabric with purple fabric ink. It dries really quickly and heat sets easily. Doesn't change the hand of the fabric like paint does either (ie, you can quilt through it with no problem!).

These black pieces were stitched onto the quilt top with gold metallic thread. Then the quilt was layered and quilted with rayon thread.

And yes, I realize that I don't have an overall picture of "Black Hole Sun", that will have to wait until I get the quilt back from the EBHQ show.

By the way, the title comes from a song title, a song that has been stuck in my head for oh, about 14 years. It is from Soundgarden on their album Superunknown. You can see the super freaky scary video here.