Watercolour paper ( from
here) tracing paper printed with the saying (and I have searched for an author and cannot find one) and brads.. I was going to write the saying on acetate and then I thought that it wouls be difficult to see with the bright background, then - flash! If I used the tracing paper, I could print the saying and tone down the background at the same time. In fabric, you could use chiffon or organza to the same effect.
I have been playing with those watercolour effects I got
here on fabric, with only minimal success, but some nice pieces of fabric did result.
I washed all the fabrics and then towelled them dry before adding some liquid watercolours. Starting from the left, was a face wipe, then cotton, then the two at the right are canvas on top and satin on the bottom. It was interesting how the paint spread differently on the different fabrics.
I think part of my problem this time was that I had too much colour for the water to cope with. These were pretty vibrant and concentrated and when I did this on paper, it worked best with the paler colours.
But this is what I got.
This was the satin, and it did work a little bit, but the expanding circles did not condense, however it is pretty gorgeous as a fabric,
This was the cotton, which did not work particularly well, less well that the satin, but made an interesting effect.
This was the face wipe I used to clean up with and it did work, even though there were not any drops of colour.
This is the actual face wipe from the original picture. I scrunched it uo to blend the colours and got mud, but again the water drops worked.
This is the canvas and it decidedly did not work. I created the white dots by pushing water through the centre with a pipette, it is not due to any movement of the water on it's own.
There appear to be two things I have picked up from this, other than perhaps I used to much colour.
- Non wovens, where there really is no grain work best, probably because the water can move in all directions, just like in paper
- in woven fabrics, the canvas was least effective, probably because the large fibres are twisted tightly and woven tightly as well. The cotton, was the next best and coincidentally, the fibres here were not woven as tightly and could be fluffed into fibres, so were looser. The satin had a loose weave that frays easily, and the fibres don't appear to be spun together at all, just bunched. There was less resistance to the movement of water and colour and as a result there was some success.
I don't know how any of this is going to help me reproduce these effects on fabric, but it was fun playing with it.
