Friday, August 12, 2011

Tyvek and Lutradur - Painting and distressing

I have had a little bit of a play with Tyvek and Lutradur, something I have been going to do for a while.

Heavy weight Lutradur.
Tyvek fabric.
My first task was painting.  Above are some fabric paints.
I used a sponge to apply paint to the tyvek and Lutradur.
Then more in another colour,
and more.......
and more. I found with the tyvek, being not absorbent to water, only air (which after all is what it was created for), you need thick paint that sticks to get good colour.  The Lutradur, on the other hand, soaked up all the paint very quickly as you see below.
Next, after the fabrics were dry, I wanted to heat distress them to see what effects I could get.
In the above sample, the left piece was heat gunned on the unpainted side.  the right piece on the painted side.  Whichever side you heat, the bubbles form away from it and ridges form on the heated side
This picture is a bit clearer.  This is shown heated side up.  It shows the ridges on this side.  I have seen samples where this effect really looked like rocks or pebbles.
This is the Lutradur after heating.  The holes were formed quickly in the unpainted areas, whilst it took a lot of heat to get holes in the painted areas.  I will have to experiment a little more with this effect.  But I can see how it could make a naive tree/leaves applique where you burn away where there are no leaves, or other sorts of patchy textures.
Obviously, I have only used fabric paint here and there are lots of other things to put on and explore, but each experiment gives me something to put away in my tool box for another day and doing it myself, not just reading it, means I will probably remember when the time comes.

Experimentingness is next to craftiness.