polymer clay and paper

I used a polymer clay leaf for this atc.  Many years ago, I was a cake decorator, and, those leaf and flower cutters and molds I used work fine with polymer clay.  I painted/coloured the clay with a texta/marker, then wrote the word leaf.  The letters are covered with those little clear things you put under coasters and ornaments and you get them at the hardware.  I finished off with a few more scribbled leaves on the card.

This leaf is cast from toilet tissue and water (no PVA this time).  I made the mold from a big dangly leaf earring.  In fact, I made a batch of molds today and burned them (by accident).  They are pretty black, but they still work fine.  Just annoying.

I have been playing a lot with paper and painting lately.
Some of you might have noticed I have started using my own papers for the digital quotes at the end of my blog.  In many ways, it's just another artistic outlet.

This is a journal spread background I did recently, but am cogitating about.  I coated the page with gesso, then laid tissue over whilst it was still wet and moved it around to get lots of creases, then added a light watercolour wash and let it seep into the creases.  I like this one because it looks to me like a view into a forest with big tree trunks to either side, so now I am thinking about how best to bring those trees out.

This is the cover of a small altered book, using pink tissue and with a light layer of gesso again over the top.  The texture is lovely.

This is a piece of watercolour paper I sprayed with green watercolour and a pinky coloured metallic spray (which had mica in it)  I laid glad  wrap or saran wrap on top and wrinkled it.  As it dried, the shiny mica tended to move to the creases.  This is gorgeous.

This one is copier paper, which I sprayed with the same paints, then scrunched up and then opened. When I took this photo, it was still damp, but when it was dry, I ironed it a bit and the mica has distributed itself in another way, but still lovely, on some of the flat places and not others.

Hope everyone has a great Easter tomorrow,  don't forget to collect all those pieces of foil!

Sorry about the covered up word - lit!

pears and baby quilts

In today's ATC I was experimenting with vaseline!  I painted the background yellow, then "painted" the pears with vaseline.  then I painted over the top with red and when it was dry, I wiped away the vaseline an voila! two pears.  I added a few details with markers and then stamped the word over the top.

Today I am showing some quilts I have been working on, little baby.........journal quilts!

These quilts are only five inches square, so they don't take long.  This one was a piece of furnishing fabric I loved, which I simply quilted then beaded in places.  It is bound with transparent blue nylon knitting yarn.

This one I really love and have made a few extras.  I started with a cotton base, then placed all sorts of synthetic scraps higgeldy piggeldy all over it.  Then I covered it with black satin and quilted a leaf pattern.  Then I soldered away the leaf layers randomly.  With this one, I went a bit further and cut all of the leaves away.  The one below

was just after soldering into the leaves and it wasn't as effective as cutting it all away, but using the soldering iron initially did help with stopping the fraying of the satin.

This last one is not finished yet, although it is a bit further along than this.  It is also just a piece of fabric I loved, which has been quilted around the motifs.  then I added three metal dragonflies and now am dithering about what sort of edge and whether any embroidery is in order.  I think beads would be way too much!

So, that's what I've been up to.  What about you?

Sew and so

Today's ATC is a result of one of my prompt cards.  It said add curves and wavy lines.  My friend Lisa had been doing a lot of couching, so I made my lines with yarn

I started by free motion couching, but usinf free motion I actually found it easier with straight stitch!  One very messy ATC as a result.

Another prompt card told me to add some doodles.  So I doodled a leaf.

Perhaps I should have used a contrasting thread, oh well.

Also, here are a few pages from my journal- also very messy

I tend to write prose/poetry or inspirations in my journal, and play with lots of strange art materials, like a straw for a stamp or a white out pen.  The second one is today's, which is why I chose the following inspiration for today.

lots of leaves

Today's ATC happened in a round about way.
I had been looking at Julie Fei Fan Balzer's Blog and this post caught my eye. I have this book Scraptastic by Ashley calder, but haven't spent much time on it, so I  thought, why not?

This was one of the ideas in chapter 1.  Stamped molding paste.  I used an ivy leaf stamp which I have three sizes of.  The colour was scrapings from chalk pastels, which I brushed on, and then wrote the text with a fine tipped brush and some watercolour.  What I found was that it was easier to actually stamp the stamp in the chalk powder, then onto the molding paste, as I got a better image.

This is my practice page in one of my altered books.
And while we are at it, here are a few other more recent additions to these books.

This one I don't think is quite finished, but it has some interesting ideas on it.  The black edge was liquid shoe polish spomged on, then when that was dry I sponged on some pale green watercolour.  The ferns, or leaves, were just done with markers, but I am still thinking over the next step.

This page, as you can see, is the one facing the leaf page.  Since I had my pastels out (which doesn't happen very often these days), I thought I would have a play.  soft pastels are very concentrated pigment.  what I did here was scrape them so that the powder was sitting on the page.  Then I sprayed the page with water and stood the book up to let it drip.  This reminds me of a wisteria arbour  and i might actually turn it into one, but it needs thinking.

This was an experiment with waxed paper.  I scrunched up a large piece of waxed paper, then opened it out and ironed it onto the paper.  Then I put some dilute watercolour over the page and you can see the pattern it made, sort of a parchment type look or a leather look.  (The splotches were on the page before I started).

These two are parts from a page that I used under my work on this and other occasions.  Usually, I dampen the page before I start, so that and drips will spread on it.

A very papery day today, with not much stitch in it.

yin and yang and a satin stitch tip

Watercolour paper on card, concentrated liquid watercolour dripped and dried between colours, hand made stamp.  This is my own take on the yin-yang symbol, which you might have seen before in my sketchbook

No leaf today, but there are two leaves in the stamp. 
Instead, I'm going to tell you about my trials and tribulations with satin stitch edgings.
I have tried every method known to man, but my corners get eaten up by my machine!  I have tried the embroidery floss technique, I have tried the sew first cut second method,  I have tried using water soluble stabiliser, and heat aways and tear aways.  I have tried so many ways to do this seemingly simple thing that all other sewing machines seem to do so easily, that I thought I would never get it.
When all of a sudden it occured to me.
When I am quilting or thread painting something small, I often put a larger piece of paper-scrap computer paper underneath to stabilise.  It seems to have more strength than the tear aways, which crumble as soon as you look at them.
Anyway, I thought, why don't I try this with satin stitch edgings?

You can see in the picture that I have gone around the corner really nicely, with the paper underneath.

The paper tears away quite nicely, as you can see.

Then, because this happened to be a satin that liked to fray, I had a little trimming and a touch up with a permanent marker to match the thread and voila!

A great satin stitch edging (which I showed on my ATC the other day)
With some pieces, I leave the paper on the back.  It depends on the purpose.  With an ATC, it gives extra strength and somewhere to write on the back, so I glue it on before I start.  With other pieces, I take the paper off the back afterward.
I am pretty pleased with this method, because after so many tries, I finally found a method that suits me, and secondly, scrap paper is easy to find!
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Once upon a time, before we had all these mods and cons, paper was used as a stabiliser.

A stamp and nappy liners

A fabric ATC today.  Tree stamped on cotton fabric with homemade stamp.  Embellished with silver charms and painting with gold acrylic.  Satin stitched edge (Yes!)

I picked this leaf in the garden today.  It is from a plant called soapwort.  I brought it inside and made my own version, which I quilted, then cut the batting away underneath, then tacked the excess fabric around to the back.

Continuing on from the cellofoil experiments,  I was thinking about the nappy liners and decided to experiment with them.  I like to use them as sheer overlays that can be heat distressed.

I  ironed the liner to baking paper, but it didn't stick very well.  I painted it anyway.

Most of the paint went straight through.  This is the liner on it's own.

But the baking paper was gogeous!  I can certainly find a use for this!

next I tried ironing the liner to freezer paper.  It coloured really well, but as you can see, it didn't come off particularly well.

The effect on the freezer paper was pretty interesting.

Next, I tried ironing the liner to waxed paper (which I scrunched up first, then flattened out. I did this with the freezer paper as well)  The liner stuck, and I got some good colour on the liner, although in places, the liner was stuck to the waxed paper, but nothing like the freezer paper.

But I really liked the distressed look of the waxed paper afterwards.
I wonder what would happen if I used a temporary glue to attach the liners?
hmmmm..... another day.

soldered leaves and ironed cellofoil

Synthetic scraps layered on cotton, covered with satin, stitched then soldered to reveal the scraps.  Satin stitched edging - yay! finally got it!
I will show you a bit more on this technique ina day or so.

I have a growing collection of cellofoil.  This is the plasticky foil that comes as candy wrappers, on crisp/chip packets and on rice cakes.  I use rice cakes, so these packets yield a large piece of cellofoil, whilst the candy wrappers, although colourful are very small.
I have been thinking of ways to use these in my mixed media, so the other day, I got experimenting.

This is cellofoil, with plastic bags (preironed to fusible)  ironed on top.  Since the plastic bags are very thin, and break up when you iron, the cellofoil peeps through and looks very nice.

This one has some painted fusible ironed on and it looks absolutely gorgeous.  My fingers are itching to use this sample.

This one has a painted nappy/diaper liner fused to it.  I used a sprinkle of fusible granules, only a tiny bit, to get it to fuse.  Since the liner is so thin, the metallic cellofoil is visible and looks lovely.
After I used the nappy liner, I went off on a whole other tangent with the liners, but I'll get to that in another post.
These pieces of cellofoil are certainly  going to feature in some of my pieces.  It's a great feeling when you have a successful experiment.  But all experiments are useful.