A bit of paint

I felt like painting the other day, but had no Idea what to paint.  You know we all suffer from that sometimes.  So instead of dithering, I just slapped some paint on a canvas.

This was my first layer.  Still no idea.

I added some stencilling.  Still no idea

I added some dribbles, still didn't like it, so I added some more paint.  Still no idea.

I saw a blue pot, so I painted that in.

The dribbles from previously made some yellow bricks, so I painted them in.

A bit more work on the bricks, and the pot.

I got rid of the yellow blob on the left of the pot and put some foreground in.
And that's where I am at, but now I have an idea.  Geraniums, perhaps, and I think an orange red glaze over the bricks.
But As usual, I will let it sit for a while before I finish it.
It's amazing where ideas come from.
Picasso said "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working"  It is one of my favourite quotes, because it is so true.

Happy Creating!

more fusing fun

Now that I am back on the mend again, I have been doing some more work with my silhouette, which I am getting pretty proficient at I must say.
Yesterday at quilting group (where I was NOT quilting, but crochetting - as you do), I was leafing through a magazine and saw some pansies.  I thought they might make a pretty table runner for our stall, so I sketched up a few of them, then put them into my silhouette (Digital cutter) and cut out lots.

I made three different ones, just for variety.  I had lots of scraps left over....

And I am sure I will find a use for all of these, lol.
I started a little journal quilt from the tiniest scraps.

I will probably just do some hand embroidery over these strips, but they were so colourful, I just had to do it.

Here is how the little flowers go together.  I put some little yellow bead in the centre just to see how it looked.  These are just laid out, not fused yet, because I can't decide what background to use.

What do you think?  I do like the top left, but perhaps it is a little low contrast, perhaps the bottom right?
I have also been working in my journals, mostly just putting background layers down to add to later.

This one is just a bit of paint on gesso, then had glad wrap (Saran) scrunched over whilst still wet.  It makes a nice texture.

This one is just a few greens dry brushed on (a great way to ruin your brushes, too)

This one is just a bit of left over paint brushed on.

And this one was just playing with a few colours in squares.  The copper is a metallic paint.

These samples are from a while ago, I was playing with different textures and coloured gesso.  I used forks, sticks and laying pages together and peeling off on the first one, stencilling, stamping and tape in the second one.  A comb and a pencil on the third one.

And these two are on fabric, with some stitching.

These are fabric paper samples, with sprayed, dripped and blotted inks.

 these are playing with watercolour on wet paper

These are playing with all types of circles collected around the house.
As you can see, I recycle everything.  Some of the samples are on old flashcards from my teaching days, lol

And just for interest, here is another butterfly

This one was a rubbing over a stencil with soft chalk pastels.
I wonder, is a butterfly a new beginning?

I saw this quote in the quote of the day at the top of my blog (wednesday, it changes each day), and had to make a new digi inspiration!

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.

Another leaf and some painting

today's ATC is another leaf!!
Felt, Wire, Silver thread, green stranded cotton, running stitch, couching, chain stitch.

I was looking at  the colouricious site in response to their newsletter, and found a gorgeous landscape by Ineke Berlin.    This one is also gorgeous, too.' 

Ineke uses Lutradur for her landscapes and because it is a non woven fabric, there are no fraying problems.  I thought I would have a go at it.  I have lutradur, but I looked around to see what other nonwovens I had.

I found some nappy lines, some face wipes and baby wipes and for good measure, I added some tea bag paper.

Since they were all very thin, I layered them up, so that ant paint going through would go onto the fabric below, and I decided to use the kids paint brushes I bought the other day. (Instead of throwing out the paint - nothing goes to waste around here!)

Here is a baby wipe painted.  I was using primary colours, nothing very nature like about that, but I will show you how I changed the contrast and colours in a bit.

Tea bag paper - very translucent and yummy!

and some nappy liner - you can see here the colours are much more natural and the contrast is more blended in.  I did this by doing something I often do when painting fabrics for landscape.  I roll the fabric together to blend the paints.  In these two above, I rolled the fabric into a sausage and then rolled it between my hands.  In other samples, I scrunch and roll into a ball and roll between my hand, and this gives a more blotchy pattern rather than the streaks you see here.

My group of tea bag papers.  Because these were so see through, I didn't blend the colours by scrunching.)

Here are some of the face wipes and baby wipes.  you can see the bottom right, green one was scrunched rather than rolled.

More baby wipes and some nappy liners.  The two nappy liners at the bottom show clearly the difference between rolling and scrunching with these very thin materials,

All in all, a very successful session.  Now, I need to do a bit of work on my sketch of the creek, which is what I want to use this for.  and start cutting ripping, arranging and sewing.  Hopefully, I'll have something to show by next week, although I still have one deadline today week to get done!  (It will be down to the wire as usual for me)

An ATC a day keeps the world at bay!
Go see lisa's ATC

Painted papers

At present, I am posting a lot of mixed media, however I do have a number of textile pieces in process. 
I will be posting these as they are finished in the next few weeks
Deadlines are looming, and of course, that is when the work gets done, lol.
Today I am posting about some painting on paper I did recently.  The papers will be used in collage and mixed media work.

As you can see from the overviews above, I did quite a few samples as well as trying out a couple of techniques at the same time.
The first thing I wanted to play with was paste paper.  I had recently read about this at a gorgeous bookbinding blog here.  If you are not at all interested in paper, you will be after looking at her galleries.

Paste paper is like what we called fingerpainting at Kindergarten, just a bit more of a grown-upversion. Whilst not really paste papers, the two above were printed with paste paint, using a lace doily (a mass produced machine one) The first is the positive and the second is the negative.  I loved this effect.

These second two are using paste paint on newspaper.  In the first one, I used a barbecue rubber brush to create a pattern, in the second, my fingers, but you can see that even with dark paint the coverage is really not good enough for newspaper.

This sample used green paste paint with glitter on brown paper.  The swirls were created with the rubber brush.

This paste sample was swished with the brush.  This was on a coated paper and you can see in the top right that the coating decided to come off.  not a good paper to use.

This one is the same, using a brush to create texture, but on a more interesting paper which knows how to behave.  This was on an opened out white paper bag, (with a shiny side, like you buy lollies/candy in at the shop)  The result was almost translucent when dry and I really liked it.

The same white paper and paste, using the rubber brush to make this lovely texture.  My favourite.

This time more colours, some metallic and a small brush to make swirls.  This one is great, too.

This one is what is called a pulled paper - You know when you used to make inkblots or butterflies by folding the paper paint side in then opening it again.  The texture is really interesting and I will be doing maore of this type.

The other things I wanted to play with were newspaper and adding stuff to painted papers.

Here are three painted newspapers.  The two things I learned were that the paint needs to be dark and thick and more than one layer works best.  I don't want to obscure all the print, but I want it to be difficult to read.
I also decided that it would be worht trying a light coat of gesso before painting to wash out the text a bit, then I could have more muted colours.

These three were all paint on paper, but with different additions sprinkled on.  The one on the left was baking soda - in the middle rock salt and right was sugar.  They all create a different texture. ( I do not think the baking soda changed the colour, but being a biochemist I am aware this is possible, so as i can't remember if the paint was the same in all three, I will just have to do it again)

The final two samples are just using different papers.

This one is on white butcher's paper, the type they wrap your meat in.  I used the shiny side and found it took prints really well.

This last sample was an accident, but I was interested in what happened.  I used freezer paper under my papers to protect the work surface and this is a piece which inadvertently got painted.  I thought the paint would come off, but it doesn't, so it's worth keeping my protecting sheets for another project.

All in all, this was a very productive day, and I got a lot  sheets of lovely paper to use in my books and mixed media out of it.  The sample tags I have shown here are just little bits cut off the edges of thode sheets, and would you believe it?  I have also used the scraps from cutting out the tags on some collaged book covers!

We don't waste much around here!