Glimmer Mists with stencils

Over Thanksgiving, I had brought a bunch of stencils to our weekend family get together. Then we went to the local scrapbook store and she had glimmer mist sprays for 75% off (she was having a huge inventory reduction sale. I might have bought some other things too.) Even though I had probably 12 of these at home, I felt the need to buy three since it was such a good sale. My sister bought some and my mom bought some, so we had quite the selection.

We would typically spray through the stencil on one piece of paper, then lift the stencil off and flip it spray side down on another piece of paper, to get two prints from one spray.

Here are my aunt's. She cut and collaged them as well.

Here are my niece's.

 Here are my sister's.

Here are my mom's.

Here are mine. I think I used too many layers as they look a bit overworked. I do like the orange circles layered with yellow zig zags and would like to do that without the purple detail on top (upper left).

Another fun family art play day!

Painted and stamped canvas

I have a specific idea for a piece of art that includes painted canvas, part of a recycled felted wool sweater, and embroidery.

Since I was painting a piece of canvas, why not paint two?  The one on the left was gessoed, the one on the right is without gesso.  I took a class two years ago where we painted on unprimed canvas and I liked it, so I thought I'd try it again.

Here is the gessoed canvas, below. I am using a color palette that is not one I typically use. The base colors are Quin magenta with white, Cadmium yellow?, Martha Stewart Orange with some yellow mixed in, Process Magenta mixed with Quin red. I just painted sections different colors until the canvas was completely covered. I then took turquoise paint and stamped a bubble-wrap looking stamp, then stamped turquoise swirls.  I used a kitchen wire whisk and stamped it with black paint.  I then used Tulip dimensional paints to squirt swirls and lines using black, deep turquoise, and red.  Most of this will be covered by the felted wool layer I will be adding on top, so it's okay that it's a bit messy.

This is the unprimed (no gesso) canvas, below. I did enjoy painting on the unprimed canvas as the paint acts more like watercolor. The paints blend into each other more, as long as they are still damp.  I used the same stamps and paints as before. Since I don't have a "game plan" of what I am going to use this for, I was a bit more restrained.

Here is a detail shot.

I hope to have the first piece done by the end of the week, but there is a lot of hand embroidery to be done so we will see.

Using leftover thread to make thread "fabric"

I had a large amount of black thread that I had used for basting a project. Not wanting to just throw it away, I decided to make some thread "fabric" with it.

I spread out the thread onto some Solvy water soluble sheets. It would have been way easier to use a sticky soluble backer with a soluble coversheet (which I own) but didn't think about it.  The threads liked to catch on my sewing foot so I had to be vigilant that they went under and not over the foot. I just used a straight stitch with the dog feet up. On one sheet, I did a lot of straight stitched lines. The other, I did large circles.  The one with circles looked cooler than the straight stitch before I dissolved the backer sheet.

Before dissolving the backer sheet, straight lines on left, curved on right

 Backside before dissolving.

This is after dissolving the soluble backer.  The straight stitched is on the left and curved stitch is on the right.

Straight stitched:

Curved stitched:

I plan to use these in a fabric collage, most likely with adhesive, so I am not worried about them falling apart. I definitely wouldn't use them in a washable garment or quilt, as the threads will probably come loose.

Gelli printing on paper and fabric

I had my Gelli printing supplies out over the Thanksgiving holiday so I thought I'd do some more prints before I put them all away.

These seven are all done on deli paper. The top row are prints using one stencil that was crazy loops/circles. The bottom left is a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stencil. The three others on the bottom used a spring whisk and a small circle found object to make the patterns

These are all done on bleached muslin using the same supplies as above.

Some fabric close ups:

I am a little bit addicted to my spring whisk...

Gelli printing with family

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I took my Gelli printing supplies (Gelli plate 8x10, misc papers, misc paint, brayer, stencils) to our yearly family get-together.

My mom has been wanting to try Gelli printing and it was a great way to spend some quality time together (at least for us girls: my mom, my aunt, my sister, my niece, and I).

My sister's:
We typically put acrylic paint on the plate, then put stencils on top. Paper was put on top of the stencils and plate, and it was rubbed into all the stencil crevices.

On deli paper

Then after removing the paper and the stencils, there would be paint remaining on the plate. We would put another piece of paper down and rub over the surface to pick up the remaining paint. Sometimes we could get a third print. Halfway through our experiments, we realized we could put the paint covered stencil onto another sheet of paper to get yet another print.

On music sheet

On scrapbook paper with french writing

My niece's:

On rice paper

On bug page from illustrated encyclopedia

 My mom's:

On atlas page

On music sheet

On plant page from illustrated encyclopedia

 My aunt's:

On index page from encyclopedia

 Mine:

All on deli paper

My favorites

I love the stencil I used for the image on the left. It is a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stencil I bought over the holiday. I think it rocks! By the way, I used Golden Fluid acrylic for just about all of our prints. I used Carbon Black for mine and the paint stuck to the plate like nobody's business. Mixing in some liquid matte medium into the black paint when brayering it on made it much easier to clean the plate afterward. Without the matte medium, I had to use soap and water to get it off completely.

Since I had my gelli printing supplies in one place when I got home, I did more gelli printing on Sunday. I will post those later this week.

Carnival Mixed Media piece

Here is a picture of my "Carnival" piece that was in the New Core Gallery's Square show. The show ended on Sunday, but it was nice to see it hung up properly since we don't have a lot of wall space in our house.

Handmade Christmas pot holders

I've been having computer problems, but it's been so long since I've posted,  I decided to do what I could with our laptop. Unfortunately I don't have any photo editing software on it, so I had to use Picasa to crop and lighten photos. I do have a handful of posts to put up so will be blogging a lot this week.

Last year for Christmas, I started making hot pad holders for my Mom but they did not get finished. All they needed was binding, so once I finished them up, I decided to make some more.

 Front side, finished:

Back side shown on left:

I had made my Aunt some Christmas place mats and thought I'd pull out those fabrics and make some matching pot holders. See the place mat post here.

I already had some strips left over from the place mats, but had to cut some more. 

I sewed the strips together and ironed the seams. Then I cut on a 45 degree angle from the seams and cut 4 1/2" wide strips.  I then cut them into 4 1/2" squares.

 Here are all my squares. I played with the alignment and which square would go where.

Here is my final arrangement.  I decided the best finished size was 6 1/2" x 9". The first (purple) set was only 8" long and it left the wrist exposed, which I did not like. 6 1/2" wide let my fingers reach the side edges of the hot pad without them swimming around in the pocket. I cut two edges of my quilt top so the middle seam was still centered.

 So here are my layers: quilt top, heat resistant batting, cotton batting, back fabric and pocket (which is 16" long and folded/ironed in half, so the pocket piece is roughly 1" shorter than the rest of the pot holder).

Here are the finished pot holders. I could have done some free motion quilting on them but decided they may be more heat resistant without it.

 Back side shown on the left:

 I used this tutorial for doing the binding. There are things I liked and things I did not like about it, but it did the job. Hers looks way better than mine did. When sewing the front side, if I sewed it close to the edge of the binding, it did not catch the binding on the backside, I ended up sewing farther in from the edge than I would have liked. If anyone has a good all machine binding technique, please let me know. I did zig zag stitch all the layers together before adding the binding.

Then I made a pair for my sister. I think these are really fun. I just made a strip of different fabrics, each 2 1/2" high, width varies from 1" to 2 1/4" wide. I sewed a 3/4" strip to the top and bottom of the pieced panel, then added the larger pieces at either end. The purple ones at the top of this post were done the same way.

These were pretty quick to make and were well received at our Thanksmas (Christmas at Thanksgiving) celebration last week!