flutterby

A simple card today.

This was a vintage image from dover that I printed on tissue paper then laminated onto a mottled blue card.  This transparent tissue laminating idea, is an extension of an idea I got from Marilyn Rock, which I have mentioned before.

I actually have been very busy today, only haven't got around to taking any pictures.  But tomorrow is another day.

Making art

Often, when I am playing, I make ATC sized backgrounds of paper or fabric along with whatever I'm doing.
This was one of those, made quite a while ago...

...and decorated today.. Playing card, gesso, molding paste thru a piece of plastic from the recyling, coloured markers, stamp. Now that I see it against a white background, I can see it needed an edge.

Also, today was the reveal of our Tangled textiles challenge, balance.  Have a look at the other gorgeous pieces by my friends here.

This is my piece, Light and Shade, based on a photo by Jorg Reuter which is creative commons here.
Free machine thread sketching, Acrylic paint, watercolour pencils and handstitching (The handstitching is not finished yet, couple of million stitches to go, lol)
Of all my Tangled textiles pieces, this is my favourite so far, even if it's not finished

Very Cross

Something slightly different to my usual  ATC style.  This one goes to show that an ATC can be anything!  I actually dislike counted cross stitch quite a bit, bit it was a change to what I was doing today. which was freestyle handstitching.  Lots of it.
I simply mounted this tiny crostitch on a playing card by turning the edges and tying in the corners, leaving little tufts.

The title of this ATC is a pun on what it is and how things are going.
It is down to the wire with my Tangled textiles piece, and I don't think I will be finished, however it will be finished enough to reveal.  It has been a very hard month in more ways than one and I am pleased with what I have done, only wish there was more time.....

Remember to create every day,  even if it's just an ATC, lol

Fireworks

For this ATC, I used the canvas I painted yesterday,  I felt those splats of colour were just asking for some embroidery.  I used metallic machine embroidery thread, matching the colour to the colour of the fabric when I could.  It is actually very sparkly and glittery in real life.  I am a bit partial to frayed edges, so I cut the canvas a bit bigger than ATC size to allow for the fraying.

not much else to show today as I am finishing my TT challenge and working on some swaps that are late!
Oh the reason for the name - Moomba is March in Melbourne.


A stitch in time.....makes art!

an overlay and a drip or two

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.

A simple word, and some chemistry

A simple ATC Today

Bagged watercolour on heavy textured paper (from yesterday) glittery stickers (Bling) and a rub on word.

Yesterday, when I was playing with dropping the water onto the watercolour, I noticed this

See how the purple split into red and blue?  Well being a biochemist and a teacher, I decided to do an experiment I have often done on science nights, although for those experiments I usually use a black pen instead of paint - paper chromatography.
Different colour molecules are different sizes, and due to their size, they with move along a piece of paper wet at one end depending on their size.

I painted some of the paints I used yesterday at the bottom of a strip of paper, then stood the paper up in a tray with a quarter to a half inch of water in it.
The water will slowly soak up the paper taking the colour with it.
I was entranced at this stage, because it looked so like a little landscape with pine trees in front.

This was the result after an hour or so.  I won't bore you with the details, but say that I loved the blue and yellow bits at the top and the little smudge of red.  This one had a lot of black, so I re did it with a bit less

This one wasn't left so long, and the fluting at the top is more pronounced and interesting.
When I do this with children, as I said, the colour is usually a black ballpoint, because with  alcohol instead of water as I used here, the pen ink separates into different colours.  I was surprised that the black water coulour didn't separate, so...

I repeated it with alcohol (rubbing alcohol or methylated spirits)
The one on the left is pretty much the same as the first one with water and had similar colours.  It seemed like the black didn't separate, but when you compare it to the one on the right which was the same but no black, you can see that the black is contributing to the colours as this one doesn't have as much.  Also you can almost see some blue separating off the black on the left, if you look hard.

Anyway, thst was my experiment, and I am thinking about how I could make those fluted lines on a piece of fabric, by repeatedly drying and adding new colour to the bottom.  Of course this is only one brand of paint in a few limited colours, different brands will mix their pigments in different proportions.  I am pretty sure you could use dyes for this as well.

(I used digital images from DSE  from the text me series and from Ellie Lash's freebie Fridays

Leftovers and little drops of water

This ATC was made from a piece trimmed from a larger landscape.  I liked the texture in the sky and the swirls in the land, or sand.  I edged it with glue and gold leaf.  The larger collage used fabric and fibre scraps arranged, the covered with tulle and then free motioned.

Today I had a little play with some cheap kid's paint pens and dobbers that I had.

the water and the dropper came into play later.

For this piece of watercolour paper, I painted the red and blue paint onto a damp face wipe and then dabbed it on, or some people call it bagging.

for this one, i dampened the paper first with a spray bottle, the added drops of paint.
I actually did drip some water drops on this one, which created the slight haloes in the centre of the blue splotches.

On this one, I painted red, yellow, green and blue onto wet paper.  I dripped water drops onto it when the paint had settled a bit, not dry, but not wet.  It created these lovely haloes.

This one was bagged, then dripped water drops on.  This is really nice.

 This was a piece of smoother watercolour paper that I  also bagged then dripped water on.  It makes a great background texture.

On this one in my altered book for samples I used the paint dobbers and then smeared with a face wipe, then dripped water, and then I dripped diluted red into the centre of some of the splotches.

another page in this book was bagged with red and blue, then dripped on with water and the dilute red in places.  This one almost looks like a field of daisies.

I wondered whether it mattered how dry the watercolour was, so I tried it on a page I had made weeks ago and I liked how the colours separated.  See how the purple became a blue circle with a red rim?
This of course led me on to another experiment, which I will show you tomorrow - and of course, I need to try all of these out on fabric.

Speaking of fabric, one of the bonuses of these painting sessions is...

The gorgeous painted face wipes I end up with to use in fabric collages!