Friday, January 13, 2012

Let's play and go shopping

Today's ATC is a mixed media one
On  an ATC mattboard, scribbled markers (textas), black shoe polish, glitter. enamel square, spiral paper clips, cardboard letters (and tacky glue of course).
and all I've got to blog about is a bit of shopping!
I am the dollar store queen, when it come to supplies.
some pealy brads.  I love brads.
some light wooden circles, which might make a good stamp and embellishment.
some stick on gems, which I of course wanted yesterday for my ATC, so had to do something different
Some great foam stamps, I love butterflies, don't we all?
Some felt sheets, for 69 cents!
leather scraps - a great find!
lots of great stickers with text, pictures, sayings etc.
some great papers.
Greaseproof paper, which is just like craft tissue and which I use in fabric papers and tissue collage. And contact film, clear book covering, which is great for tape transfers and means you are not limited to the width of tape.
some pebbles, which I have been wanting for a while
And last of all, some cheap kid's paint brushes, which you can refill with whatever you want, then squeeze to paint, useful for painting big areas, and for coating pages with PVA.

So, although I haven't got any work to show today, I have done a bit of preparation and since it is my birthday tomorrow, I don't feel too guilty, lol

Don't forget to spoil yourself!



Thursday, January 12, 2012

Remember spring, and altered books

playing card, molding paste through a stencil, gesso, watercolour paint, (very messy) decorative machine stitching, lazy daisy, felt backing.

Another brief glimpse into my artbooks, today.

This is a niche, cut into my insect theme book, using layered tissue paper and a cast tissue dragonfly.
and another, layered tissue page in my techniques book, with some decorative stitching on the side of the page.
I have arranged some distressed leaf samples I did a while ago on some paste paper in my leaf theme book.

Here are two little niches, front and back in my leaf theme book.
hereis the page complete, with a metal leaf and a cast made from it mounted.
and from the back, with the distressed leaves showing through.
this page is created using newspaper, gesso, acrylic and then a watercolour wash with salt.
And I am playing with this acetate overlay, but I think I might make one out of stitching to go on this page.

I am very busy with things I can't show you yet, which is quite frustrating, but hopefully next week the pressure will be off slightly and I will be able to get some playing done!

And don't you forget to play every day! 

Don't forget Lisa's ATC

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

another metal ATC and my doodled bird in progress

Today's ATC is another embossed foil one, a leaf, which I have painted with nail polish.  It is sewn onto some more of my collage background with chain stitch and french knots and bound with organza ribbon.

some of you probably remember this bird from one of my artbooks.
I actually have a small quilt in process using this design.
here it is with the outline quilting done
and a close up
I have now started the doodling in the feathers
I am really enjoying doing this ddodling and have been practising lots of doodles in my quilting scrapbook
Here's a close up.  I think I need to go over the stitching more than once as it is such a thin thread and I'm sure there will be some scope for beading when it is done.



Happy stitching, don't forget to check out Lisa's ATC and the TAST page

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

a bit of a daisy and some transfer experiments

This atc is made from a bit of the Pam carriker collage I showed a few posts ago.  The daisy is molding paste painted gold.  I have added a few beads to the centre and blanket stitched the edge.


I have been fiddling a bit with transparency transfers since reading about using hand sanitiser gel in pam carriker's book.  I works really well.
The tranfer (on to fabric) on the left is with sanitiser gel, and worked really well, despite my awful pictures.  I wondered if it was the gel, so I tried some aloe vera gel, and it worked, but it bled a little (right)
This gor me thinking, so I looked at the ingredients list on my sanitiser bottle.  There was alcohol, glycerin and eucalyptus.  I happened to have all these things, so I did some experiments.
For this transfer, I mixed up my own concoction of glycerin, methylated spirits, eucalyptus, water and a bit of aloe vera gel.  It worked, but I wanted to know which things were doing the job.
This was eucalyptus and methylated spirits, with a bit of water, and worked very well, except that I moved it and smudged it.
This one was just methylated spirits(alcohol) and water.  (I have found that a little bit of water is neccesary)
I worked, but was a bit blurry.
This one was eucalyptus and water and also worked very well, although I redid the bottom and mis aligned it!
So, I think that although the alcohol does transfer, it doesn't fix the ink and bleeds a little.  The eucalyptus seems to do a good job, and has the advantage that it will evaporate away.  I think Perhaps the gel or glycerin helps to stop the bleeding because it makes the transfer medium thicker and less able to bleed.  any way, I have had some good results and will continue experimenting.
Oh, I nearly forgot, it also works well on paper.


Also, I had a little mistake and printed on the wrong side of the transparency.  I found that the ink did not dry on the acetate, so I had a go at transferring it.
I sprayed a little glen 20 ( antiseptic spray, mostly alcohol and water) on the ink and simply pressed it into the fabric.  It worked!  Just a bit of bleeding.
In this one, I used fabric which had been sprayed with alum solution to try and stop the blurring.  It worked, but the image was still not great.  The alum seemed to coagulate the black ink although the coloured inks transfered well.  This would be good for outlining with a fine black stitching....
On this one, I sprayed the glen 20 on the fabric and the damp fabric made it bleed.
This second set of experiments needs a little more refining.  My reason for exploring it is that transparencies are expensive and can only be used once.  I happen to have a lot of simple acetate sheets which I picked up at a junk store, still in their packets (the type we used to use with white board pens, when they were called overhead pens - a long time ago, lol)  The second two prints above used these sheets and after transfer, I simply wiped them clean and used them again-wow!
Anyhow, I have been having a bit of fun, playing with this technique!

don't forget to play with your art materials!

Monday, January 9, 2012

foil flower and instant gratification

This ATC is a bit monochromatic - just silver foil, brads, marker (of course the foil is not really silver, just the colour, lol)  My first go at using thick foil.

sometimes, especially now, when I am working on a few large projects, I get the need for a bit of instant gratification.  Yesterday I needed to finish something - right away.
So I did a quick fused collage based on Linda Kemshall's "Pieced Landscape" on DMTV.
Here is my quick sketch (see, my sketchbook does not only have works of art in it, lol.)
Fabric fused on the backing paper.  I use Frieda Anderson's method of drawing the pattern on the parchment paper, (I use a wax crayon), ironing the fabric on, pulling it of an cutting out using the lines which transfer to the back of the fabric.  By the way, she has been presenting a great series on art elements and principle in the last week or so)
The whole piece, arranged, fused together, peeled of and fused onto some interfacing and batting and then quilted
A close up of my simple quilting
I used the pattern in the sun as a guide for some swirls.
Here is the little bit of free motion grass added at the bottom right and the ribbon I decided to bind it with
And the finished instant gratification - not quite instant, took about three hours, but finished.
Like Linda, I have decided the contrast is not good enough between the grass and the background, so I will add some beads and hand embroidery to bling it up, so a bit more to do tonight.

This might come in handt for a landscape class I have been asked to do in a little while.   Easy for beginners. and easy to create lots of different landscapes.


Happy creating!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

spiral sun and some collage

Here is my ATC for today.  Fabric paper, crushed velvet, satin free machine embroidery, dimensional paint beads and blanket stitch.

Pam Carriker's "Art at the speed of life" is the inspiration for this collage background that I am working on.

Here is the fabric paper base, using magazine clippings and scrunched tissue paper.
Some molding paste through stencils.
Multicoloured glazxe over the top of the stencils.
A better picture showing the stencils
I love the texture of the glaze on the wrinkled tissue.
I am not sure what I am going to use this for, or if I am going to finish the other steps Pam uses, because I like it the way it is. - Any ideas?


Any time is a great time for creating.