blue flowers and some stamps

 I have been working quite hard in my studio, if the mess is anything to go by, but most of it is things that I can't post until certain dates.  Hopefully, I will get to some postable stuff tomorrow.

ATC is made from blue paper scrapbooking flowers free machined as a collage to heavy interfacing.

And now to some stamps, which I made a while ago but forgot to post.  They are all made from fun foam, cut and glued to perspex with rubber cement.
Here are the stamps I made.

Two harlequin stamps, which I have been going to make for ages, one with 45 degree angles and the other 30/60 (the longer skinny diamonds), and below a wonky checker board.

My yin yang leaf symbol, which I have already used in an ATC here, and the little comma or paisley I cut out of it.
And here are a few samples.

The one on the left is in my notebook, and the one on the right is in a gessoed journal.

But wait, there's more!
I also made these.

Two different sized trees, just made from slivers of the foam, and two little tiny leaf stamps to go with them.
And here are a few of my samples.

I like how stamping a few times with each leaf gives different values of leaf colour.

I did this one with liquid shoe polish!  I also happened to make a couple more of these stamps today, but I think this is enough for one day!

a spiral and a gift

Today's ATC is one of the ones I made yesterday with the tile adhesive.  You know me, I always use what ever is about.

On this one I added some texture with the spatula while the tile adhesive was still wet, then after it had hardened alittle, added some drops of watercolour and gold acrylic, glitter and a home made stamp.  I like the colour and texture in this one.

I have been working on a birthday present for a friend who lives nearby and is a devoted mother and artist.
I saw a challenge on club creating keepsakes (Club CK, a scrapbooking site) and the inspiration photo hit me like a truck  here.
I don't know if what I created is quite what they were looking for, because there is no scrapbooking in it.

I got a piece of mattboard that had marks on it and wasn't going to be used and covered it with tile adhesive with a scraper.

Then I used various things, like a skewer to draw lines in it to look like old distressed boards.
Below, you can see the lines more easily

Then I got two small precut matt boards, from a box full that I bought at a market really cheap.

I painted them with a thick layer of acrylic paint.

It is a bit fiddly, as the frames can slide around, but sas you can see, at the top right, I am using a skewer to hold the frame as I paint.  It hardly leaves a mark.

Here's one painted.  I let them dry totally, which took ages, because after the extremely hot weekend, we have had two days of rain - go figure.

Here I have added a very thick layer of PVA/white glue.  Up at the top, you can see some shapes I cut from plastic lids.  A train, a car and a dinosaur.  You'll see what I did with them later.

This time I added the top coat a little earlier, and it didn't crack as well, but streaked nicely.  I am learning.  I needs to be not quite tacky, but not really liquid.

Here's a close up.  As you can see, it didn't crack as well as yesterday's post.

Meanwhile, I painted the ackground with a creamy yellow acrylic, very watered down.
Then, when everything was ready (but not quite dry, because I couldn't wait and the weather was so wet), I put the layout together.

I added the frames, then used pinboard pins in red green and blue to pin them down as well as a piece of twine.  I used tiny little mini pegs I found at a 2 dollar store to clip photos, each in a little acetate leaflet for protection, in place (Obviously, these are not the photos I used, I have digitally altered them since they were not my children in the photos).  The children concerned are mad about trains, cars and dinosaurs, so I added the platic cut outs, then I added some coloured dots with bingo markers.  Last, I actually scratched into the background, some stick figures and words, as if the kids had done it.

It still needs to be framed, but my friend likes it, and that is all that matters, isn't it.

Just a last little peek at something.

Here's another Digital ATC I made.  I thought tomorrow, I might have a go at putting this one together in two different ways.  That is- make a real one!  I think I can just about manage this one.

Have fun creating!

Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 - Glue method Part 6

Making Fabric Paper.

Another way to use Method 2 (Glue method) is to use fabric as a base and add to it.  In these samples, I used different foundations and added paper scraps to them.  This creates a useful foundation for stitch, but also a firm, durable paper for collage.

For all the samples, I used torn and scrunched papers.  Torn edges will bond better and look better.  I scrunch up my papers to put texture in them and to make them more pliable and allow the medium to absorb easier.  The papers range from wrapping paper, to rice paper, to coloured scraps of printer paper, to handmade papers, and all will give different effects.

For the first sample I used a heavy weight scrim, or cheessecloth.

I painted it with medium.  You can iron the fabric prior to using it, but I find that when you paint the medium on, you can brush the creases out.

Start adding the paper scraps.  I painted each scrap individually with a 1 to 1 dilution of medium.  You will know when you have painted them properly, because they will sit flat on the base, instead of wrinkled.  This is important.  Each scrap needs to be wet all the way through with medium in order to bond properly.  After a while, you will gain experience with this, but some papers, such as wrapping paper have a cellulose gloss added to them, which takes a lot of wetting and manipulating with the brush before it is soaked right through.  Generally the colour of a scrap will be darker when it is soaked through.

Here all the scraps have been added.  I like to overlap them and not leave spaces, but you can if you want to.

At this stage, I lay on another layer of medium, to make sure the surface is wet for the next step.

Add ripped up pieces of tissue paper (the wrapping type, not the blowing type).  You can add different colours or not, depending on your taste.  You can also use pieces of sheer fabric - organza, chiffon and scrim, dyed or not here, but you will need to take care that the medium binds them down properly.  Another variation is to entrap pieces of foil, fibres, leaves, flowers etc by adding them before the tissue layer.

After adding the tissue and any other additions you might like, sponge on some diluted paint.  I used a metallic purple setacolour fabric paint - but use whatever you have got.

I also added some gold setacolor which I dabbed on with a brush.

 The fabric paper now needs to be dried.  Above is this piece after drying and a light press (on the fabric side) with the iron.  This paper has a lovely raised texture on the surface from the wrinkles in the tissue, which is highlighted by the gold paint.  It is firm, but easily manipulated and very easily stitched.

The next sample used thin cotton as a base.  I used the same technique, so I will not repeat the steps again.

Here is the cotton ready to start.  This fabric was from my scrap bag and has marks on it.  I chose it because of the imperfections, which will add to it's charm.

Adding the papers as I did previously.

After adding the tissue.  I added some pink tissue to this one.

And the final piece after drying and ironing.  This piece is slightly stiffer due to the cotton, but is still flexible and stitchable.  The cloloured tissue tended to blend the colours in the papers more than straight white, which was a nice effect.

In my final sample, I used a very lightweight scrim as the base.

Here is the scrim laid out.  This fabric will crinkle as you paint it with medium, and is very easily stretched, so take care at this step.

Above is the finished piece before drying and pressing.

And the finished piece.  This paper is extremely lightweight, but still has some stiffness. With this one, I liked the way some of the papers bled colour as it dried.  The other samples did not do this and I will have to experiment to find out how I did this, lol.

These fabric papers are a preliminary to making book covers.  The final papers will be stitched and embellished for this purpose. 
In order to remove some of the stiffness of these papers and use them in fabric collages, all that is needed is to scrunch them up and open them out flat several times - until you are happy with the texture.  You will find that they take on a more fabric-like feel as you do this.  The fabric and paper should not come apart.  If this happens, then I would guess that you did not totally saturate the scraps with medium in adding them to the base.  This is a very important step, and is why I add the pieces one by one.

Happy scrapping!