The little, or not so little magpie, of course is me. anything shiny or metallic gets my attention.
I have been plating with foils and painted fusible lately. It is not something new, I have done tutorials on it in the past, but unfortunately a lot of my old, old posts have lost their photos. Perhaps that should be an aim for this year, to redo those tutorials???
Anyhow, here is my collage a day using these lovely things.
If you are not familiar with these techniques, they both use fusible web, but in different ways. This sample is on velvet, a la
Angie hughes, but these techniques can be used on just about any surface that won't melt with an iron such as paper or wood.
Above are the offending items. The gold strips with the white back are the foil, which I have a lot of as you can see. I have other colours as well. the wrinkly pink and pale green sheets are the painted fusible.
OK, I took some pictures and here is a tutorial
To use the foil, I cut leaf shapes out of fusible (this is a web of glue on a sheet of silicon paper which comes in rolls and sheets).
The fusible web is rough on one side and smooth on the other. The rough side is the glue and the smooth side is the paper.
You take the leaf shape and place it fusible (rough) side down and iron it onto the fabric. Use the instructions that come with the fusible to iron it on, but basically I use a heat that the fabric can cope with. I also usually use some baking parchment over the top, but I haven't here so it is easy for you to see.
when the ironed on fusible is cool. You peel off the paper. Above you can see on the left, the paper has been peeled off leaving a thin layer of glue on the fabric.
Next you get a piece of foil. This is transfer foil, not metallic wrapping paper, it is a special type of foil used by printers - and textile artists!. You can see the foil is laid coloured side up. This is important, if you use it the wrong way up, it won't work.
Iron the foil onto the glue layer. Again, it is best to use baking parchment, so your iron does not get messed up.
When the fabric is COOL, you can peel off the foil. You can see on the right, above, that where you ironed onto the glue, the gold has come off the foil.
So that is how you use foil. You can wash it (gently), but you must remember that every time you iron it from now on, you need to use baking parchment, or you will get a totally messed iron.
Now for painted fusible.
Above, I have taped a piece of fusible glue or rough side up to my painting area ( it tends to roll up). I have some acrylic paint (I like to use lumiere by jacquard as it is lovely and metallic) and a brush.
Next, I spray my fusible with water. some people dilute their paint, but i find I get the most texture by spraying with water first.
Here, you can see me painting onto the fusible and you can see how the paper backing is wrinkling up and creating texture.
Here is the fusible painted.
And here is a close up of the gorgeous texture. This needs to totally dry before you use it.
Now for how to use it.
Here is some dry fusible on the right. You can see how wrinkly it gets. this is the way it should be. Some fusibles don't do this and give a very flat textureless colour. On the left you can see I have cut some leaves from the fusible.
Again, you iron the leaf shapes down. Remember to iron with the paper side up, or you get a gluey mess on your iron, and use baking paper over the top as well. The one on the right has been ironed down already
When the fabric is completely cooled, peel off the paper as above.
and you get a beautiful textured metallic leaf.
This is not the only way to use the fusible. I used some torn strips of fusible on one of my collages
This is a very simple collage. I have used painted fusible as the whole background, but you can also see another feature of the painted fusible, and that is, that because it is fusible, you can still iron more on top (using baking parchment for sure) Here I have ironed on a few bits of wool fluff and a little organza sun, but you can iron sequins, glitter, loose threads and even some foil onto it ( I would be careful with the foil as too much will cover all the lovely painted texture).
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial
Happy creating!
