Collaged mirror with gelli prints

I bought this starburst mirror at the thrift store for $8 and decided to collage it with gelli prints. I knew I wanted it to be in the basement entryway, which we recently painted blue. Also, I plan to have some orange accents in the basement. I made a bunch of blue and red/orange gelli prints specifically for this project.

Here are my gelli prints cut out. I am alternating blue and orange pieces.

In progress. I painted the starburst gold before adding the gelli prints.

 Complete.

 Here is a shot of the completed mirror (I took this picture at night, so the lighting is a little off).

 Here it is  hanging in the entryway.

 (I photoshopped myself out of the mirror reflection. I hadn't dressed up for a selfie).

Basement Entry renovation

We finally have the basement entryway done.

Here are some before shots of the basement entryway. This is one end. This wall had pressboard paneling and we had it replaced with drywall. We replaced the laminate floor with Alterna tile flooring. We repainted the ceiling and walls and changed out the light fixture.

 

This wall was unfinished previously. We moved the door to the bedroom here.

Here the new entry has been framed out for the door. The door used to be to the right and set back from the hall (where you see purple on the right side).

There was a small kitchenette at the other end, with a hallway between the two areas.  The sink was not hooked up anymore, and this seemed like wasted space to us. We decided to have this be a part of the adjacent room (which is my art room, but could be used as a bedroom). This increased the size of my art room dramatically. The wall on the left was removed and the hallway will end where the wall on the right is.

Original kitchenette (bathroom beyond).

View from adjacent room. You can see the kitchenette area (was on left) is now part of this room (picture taken from roughly same place as photo above).

The bathroom door is at the end of the hall on the right, and art room door is on the left.

Painted Fabric Collage

This summer I bought this roll of 36" wide canvas at a "going out of business" sale. They said they used it for displays. All I know is I got this huge roll for $5.  I have been wanting to do some paintings on raw canvas as well as some fabric collage so this was a great find.

I have also been buying all kinds of "vintage" fabrics and embroideries at thrift stores and garage sales. For this first piece I sewed down a bunch of them, laying them out in the same way I would for a paper collage.

Then I took some "vintage" plastic doilies and painted blue paint through them.  When I add watery washes of paint later on, this thicker paint will act like a resist. I also used a stencil to create the red circular pattern, and corrugated cardboard for the lines in the middle section. I did repaint the red circles by hand, because the way I "printed" the stencil, it ended up being a very thin application of paint.

I then painted the piece with Setacolor transparent paints, pinned stencils on top, and set in the sun to dry.  I think it turned out very nice.

Details.

This is the second piece that I worked on.  Here is my fabric collage.  I had done some wonderful leaf sun prints this past summer, and my plan was to add one to this after painting it.

I painted this with yellows and greens, and a homemade black which leaned toward being purple. It made for a nice complementary contrast to the yellow.

Detail.

I still need to add the sun print to the green piece. Both of these will be stretched around a 24' x 30" canvas, so they will be smaller than the full canvases shown here.

This canvas is very thick and trying to just sew straight lines on it was a pain since the piece was so big.  I don't think I will use this canvas if I plan any pieces with free-motion stitching as it is just too hard to move the fabric around while sewing.

I do plan to do some smaller pieces that may are may not have fabric sewed on them.

I haven't blogged much recently as I had vertigo for almost two months, so I haven't been able to do much art lately. But I am feeling almost completely better and am so happy to work on projects that I have been thinking about the whole time I was under the weather.

Felting experiments, balls, craters, and pebbles

Some more fun felting from Fiona Duthie's surface design class!

Balls and craters:

Pebbles and mirrors:

Tiles:

The balls in the first piece took forever and I don't think I will use them very often just because I am not patient enough for that. I need to iron all these samples as I think they will look even better with a little ironing.

Dyeing wool with food coloring

 I have some wool. Okay I have 16 ounces of wool, and it is white.  Time for some dyeing! I think I sometimes like dyeing things as much as I like creating things.

I am using McCormick food colorings as my dye.  I soaked my wool in water, then in a water/vinegar mixture. I am dyeing eight pieces of roving that are about 1 ounce each.

I used the microwave method, 2 minutes in the microwave, 5 minutes rest. I did this rotation quite a few times. The color is supposed to get completely absorbed by the wool and that did not happen. I rinsed them a few times and they were still not colorfast.  I ended up putting them in a vinegar water solution and that solved the problem and the water remained clear. I do not think I let the roving soak long enough in the vinegar water during the first soak.

After dyeing these, I was reading online that some of the food colors may not be light fast.  So I plan to do a light fast test on these before putting them in a final project. But they will be fun to play with in my felting class samples. 

Experiments in wet felting

I am taking a 6 week online felting course with Fiona Duthie.  I am almost caught up for the week 1 samples.

Each time I finished a sample, I thought of a similar, but different, one that I wanted to try.  But I am getting very behind already and we are only in week 2.

Here are my week one experiments.

Silk on merino.

The yellow and blue are silk (noil?) on green merino.  I hate the green and the silk looks pretty sad, so plan on over-dyeing this.

Alpaca on merino. My alpaca has a bit of vegetation in it, which drives me crazy.

The alpaca has an interesting feel to it and a soft halo.

Merino on Jacob.

 Merino on Corriedale

Nuno felting silk fabrics

Pleated silks on merino.

Detail.

I better get working on week 2!

Felted Cuffs and felt baubles

A few months ago (I am very late in posting this), I decided to do some felting experiments.

I thought all my felting supplies were in one large tub and it wouldn't be too big a deal to pull them out for a felt day. Two large tubs, one small tub, and multiple bags later, I had most of my supplies, although there are still a few things missing that are still in moving boxes.

I wanted to make some wrist warmers/cuffs, and also play with doing some three dimensional felting. I thought I'd make the cuffs by nuno felting with silk fabric.

The silk I used was too tightly woven and the wool did not felt into it, so I will need add some free motion stitching for the fabric to stay in place.  I did do some additional felting of the cuffs after this picture.

The blue and red piece is my first piece with resists.  It's not too bad for a first effort, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

I really liked the felt "bubbles" or "baubles" or whatever they are called. I didn't think they were completely felted and set them aside to try and felt them some more later on before cutting their tops off.

Now that it's been a couple months, I really lost my urge to work on them any more. I went ahead and cut their heads off last night.  They look okay, but the orange one had silk fabric on the inside, which did not felt to the wool.  The purple one has dark purple wool as the inner layer, and it could have felted more as well. I don't think they are too bad for a first try.  I had tied the baubles with cotton embroidery thread, thinking they would be permanently felted into the bauble shape. When I removed one of the pieces of embroidery thread, the opening re-opened.  Another sign that it is probably not felted enough. I will sew the bottoms closed on the back side so I can then remove the embroidery floss.

I just started a multi-week online felting class, so will be posting more felting for the next couple months. The week one sample instructions look really interesting and I am looking forward to working on them.  I better get on it, as week 2 instructions come out on Friday.