Techniques from the 2nd Life challenge.

I was going through my photos from this year and found a few that I took when I was making my Second Life textile art piece that I forgot to share. You can see my original post and details about it here: http://artygirl2010.blogspot.com/2016/07/textile-challenge-piece.html

 This photo shows the background fabric paper I made. I put music paper and other pieces under tissue paper and then painted it with several colours of Silks Acrylic Glaze. It was very pretty but most of it ended up being covered.

This photo shows what I did with the cardboard roll. I split it open then used the Cuttlebug embossing machine to emboss the pattern on it. I used the Lumiere paints and then sprayed the brown mica over it. When it was dry I used the ink pad to highlight the texture.  I used it in several places on the finished project. It would also look and feel great stuck onto an art journal page, adding loads of texture. 

This photo shows the pieces of foam I removed from the crown I had. You can also see the printed ribbon and the flannel fabric. I used texture paste through stencils to add texture to all of these objects.

I painted the fabric and ribbon with the same Lumiere paints I used above. I didn't use the brown spray this time so they look a different color. I painted the foam pieces with acrylics in similar colors. I used gold paint to highlight the raised areas then used dimensional glaze over the top. The glaze makes them look like they are resin coated and not glazed.

Collage in an art journal.

I did one of the lessons from my 21 Secrets workbook a while ago but didn't finish it off. It was called Media Remix and was a lot of fun. We took magazine pages and painted them. I put them together to make a journal and added magazine images for the subjects. For some of the pages I used stencils to cut shapes from magazine pages and stuck them down. It was a fun journal to make and now I am adding details and doodles with pens so I can pick it up and draw/doodle a little when the mood strikes.

Today I am sharing a few of the completed pages. Enjoy.

The painted and stencilled page. I sprayed them with the glitter sprays so they are very shiny and hard to photograph.

This page has little scrapbook gems added. The words were cut out from magazines too.

 These images come from my stash of collage pictures that I have collected over the years. I think these were from the scrapbook industry.

These flowers are from an art magazine. I added outlines as well as a few sketched ones too. This is an easy project to do, especially if you pick pictures that really appeal to you.

Pumice gel on fabric

One of the workshops I did from the Workshop on the Web series was about using texture paste on fabric. I didn't have any texture paste left (my old jar dried up) so I used the Golden Pumice gel instead. I tried it on a variety of surfaces and was quite impressed with how it stuck to everything I tried.

The first surface I tested was craft Vilene (interfacing). I spread the gel through a stencil and left it to dry. It was a little too coarse for spreading but I somehow managed to get it to work. It stuck really well and I have finished it off with some hand stitching.

The next surface is heavy Lutrador.  I added some soft gel medium to the coarse pumice gel to make it more spreadable. It worked great and when I use it again I would do the same, even on canvas. This will be another page in my fabric art journal.

My favorite surface I tried was teabags. I overlapped them to make a larger surface and then applied the gel through a stencil.  Later on I added a machine stitched outline and hand stitching accents. The gel stuck super well to the tea bags and none of it rubbed off when I stitched.

This surface is laminated tissue paper that was stamped and then had fiber paste applied on top (I had used up all the pumice gel). Again I added stitched details.

My final surface was to laminate the pumice gel between two pieces of tissue paper. I really like this technique because you still get the texture of the pumice but as it is trapped below tissue no little grains of sand fall off when you are stitching it. I think for this technique you could even use a little sand mixed into a soft gel medium to get the same effect. I painted the tissue with metallic paint then sprayed on various mica sprays (Moon Shadow mists) to highlight the raised areas. It was difficult to photograph but you get the idea anyway.

Thanks for looking and see you again soon. 

Natural dyeing and basketry.

I have been quite busy lately creating new work from the things I have learned at my textile group. We did a workshop on dyeing fabric using items from around the home. In particular we used some fruits, vegetables, spices and plants. We dyed small pieces of fabric in each pot so we had a sample of the colors you could get. After I got home I realized it didn't appeal to me so I decided to use my samples in a couple of textiles for my journal because I didn't want to keep them for reference. 

I was inspired to do this pattern by my daughter. She used it to paint pretty triangles on her studio wall. I did it as a patchwork. Some of the fabrics here were dyed with turmeric, flowers and eucalyptus plants. I added gold thread for interest.

This pattern was inspired by a quilt pattern I saw. I am did not worry about matching up seams properly because it is small (letter size) and only for my journal.  I used a simple running stitch as an accent. The fabrics here were dyed with blueberries, cochineal beetles and plants.

My final piece from the dyed fabric samples was inspired by a japanese quilt I saw pictures of. I used the circle spiral design but then chose to add a quote. I accented it with a simple running stitch in a circular pattern.

Last month we learned basket making using paper. It is the same traditional techniques as cane basket making but we used paper rolls in place of the cane. There is a great video on Youtube that has the same technique we learned using newspaper.

This first one is what I did at the workshop. The paper used was an old catalogue from junk mail. I painted the rim after I got it messed up so you could paint over the whole thing if you wanted. I liked the colors so I left it plain.  

I was curious what papers would work for this technique so I decided to do another. I use white copy paper and some brown paper that was on a roll from the office supply store. The brown paper was thin like the catalogue and worked really well. The copy paper was a little thick and hard to work with. I also experimented with the shape to see how easy it was to bring the sides in and out. I like the way it turned out and think the brown paper almost looks like cane. I have varnished both baskets and now they are extremely solid. It surprised me how strong they are, even before I put the varnish on.