Summer Art Market in Denver

For many years I have participated in the Denver Art Students League Summer Art Market the second weekend of June.  I was working hard to have new pieces for the show, and so my blog was largely ignored for the last month.  Also, I was working on a large art quilt and did not want to post the progress, but wait until it was finished.

I went to Denver the weekend before last and stayed for over a week. It was a blast, I had so much fun at the art fair, with my friends, doing things around town, seeing a concert at Red Rocks, and going to Denver ComicCon. I feel like I stuffed a month worth of things-to-do into one week.  And Denver had a lot going on.

I am going to do a couple posts of things I did, places I went, etc. I am going to start with the Summer Art Market.

For the last year or so, I've been doing cow gelli prints and have kind of been cow obsessed.  This year I decided I wanted to make a cow art quilt. Shaped like a cow. Big like a cow.  I started it in January and finished it the day before the show.  Here is a picture of George in my tent at the show. I will do a nicer picture later, after I iron some black fabric to use as a background.

 Here is a picture of George and I, so you can see how big she is.

Why is she named George? I love my cow quilt and I was reminded of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Daffy Duck meets the Abominable snowman, and the snowman scoops him up and says, I will call him George, and I will hug him, and pet him and squeeze him.  That is the way I feel about by cow quilt. I will do a separate post, probably next week, of all the fabric and techniques I used to create it.  I have at least three other big cows I would like to make.


Here is the other side of my booth.

Here is a street shot of the show. I had a fabulous time, met a lot of people, and sold some artwork. Win, win, win.

Hand sculpture with nails

A few weeks ago, on this post, I showed some fabric that I had stamped with washers.  I used one of those fabrics to make a hand sculpture.

I love how it turned out, but all the sewing had to be done by hand, so it was very time-consuming.  I had glued the nails to the fabric, thinking my sewing machine foot would be able to somehow sew over them, and it just did not turn out the way. If I make another one similar to this, I would sew the hand first and leave openings for the nails to be inserted through.

I am working on a series of hand sculptures to include in the Summer Art Market in Denver in June, so I will be posting some others in the future!

Hand sculptures

I had been struggling with how to accomplish the art I wanted to make, using a hand shape as the focus.  I was thinking I would do some on fabric and some of paper, but I wanted them to be at least slightly three dimensional. First I though I would make a hand outline out of metal wire and then attach the fabric or paper to it. My first wire hand shape was too stiff and wouldn't make the curves correctly. The 2nd one was too flimsy and would not hold it's shape.  I did try try cutting a hand shape out of matboard. It was tough on my hands and it took a long time to cut just one.  I felt very stuck for weeks and then had this hand-smack-forehead moment, when I figured out that I could make it even more three dimensional if I did it the same way I made my cat sculpture.

Here is my cat sculpture. I made it a few years ago and had planned to make more, but then moved on to other projects. (I just realized I never posted this on my blog previously. I was going to submit it to a craft magazine, but never did).

I only wanted a basic hand shape so it could be two pieces of fabric. I had a hand shape I had been using for the wire, so I just used that for my first try. And here is the lovely claw hand that is my first attempt.

Surprisingly, attempt two was almost perfect. I decided I didn't like the machine stitching to make the fingers, so I did hand stitching for my new ones.

I meant to take a picture of these final ones when they were still white, but I forgot. So here is an unfinished one in blue, just to show the shape.

Here is the first finished piece. I have ideas for a bunch of these, including some with free-motion stitching, some with 3D items attached.  I plan to make some stamped fabrics, and use some hand-dyed fabrics, some felt, etc for some of the others as well. The hand shape turned out very nice, although there are a few things I will tweak in the next set.

Leaves, fabric collage with sunprints

A few weeks ago, I worked on a fabric collage, which I then sun-printed with Setacolor transparent paints and stencils (see post here).

I needed to have a focal point, so I decided to layer this leaf print (sun-print with Setacolor paints on polyester organza, from this post).

I liked the way it looked but the color was too much a solid green. The leaves kind of got lost and the bottom layer wasn't very visible.

So I used some sharp fabric scissors to trim around the leaves.

Finally, I wrapped it onto a 15" x 30" canvas and stapled it on the back side.

Goldfish felt wall art

I have been taking on online surface design felting class with Fiona Duthie. It has been great and well worth the cost.  I did have a few weeks when I was having issues with vertigo and did not complete all the technique samples, but I look forward to finishing them all.

For our last week of class, we are to work on a project of our choice using some of the techniques we learned, so I included techniques from the weeks' lessons that I was able to finish. 

When I first started felting wall art, I learned my technique from Moy Mackey's book, Art in Felt & Stitch. I still used a white base layer per Moy's technique, as I want my wall art piece to hold it's shape over time, and using many layers will accomplish this.

 After the white layers (2), I added corriedale wool in black, white, and blue, to add shading to next layer. But then I got carried away and added so many layers, this probably had no affect.

  More wool (this was a variegated merino I had purchased)

And more wool. I originally put this layer down before the "all over" variegated layer (which is what is pictured here), then I removed this layer, put the all-over layer down, then put these back down on top. I also included some glass gems and small round mirrors in the layers.

I wet these down, then added my goldfish and silk fabric "water".

Here is the felted piece. I need to iron it to help remove some of the wrinkles.

 Detail

Painted Wonder Under

I have been experimenting with painted Wonder Under and foils recently. I had some large sheets of painted Wonder Under and decided to iron them onto fabric without adding any foiling. 

I love how it looks once it's been ironed on.  Now I need to decide what to do next. Fabric collage? Stitching? Both? Maybe I should iron some fabric strips to it too? There are lots of options.

Best art/experiments of 2014

This week I have been looking at some blogs that re-cap their favorite projects of the year and I thought it was a great idea.  Then I got somewhat depressed because I didn't feel like I have been very productive this year. 

I figured I could find at least a few projects to highlight, and went through my blog posts for this year. Looking through my posts actually made me feel like I had accomplished a lot, especially since we moved to a different state this summer and we have been spending a lot of time on home renovation projects. So here are my highlights...

Here are my favorite experiments from 2014:

Marbling on fabric

Sunprinting with branches and leaves

Sunprinting on interfacing with stencils

Painting over a quilt

Textile art (inspired by the Cas Holmes class I took in the spring)

Here are my favorite finished projects from 2014:

Fabric/paper collage

 

 

 

Coral art quilt

Storage box with gelli prints

Gelli printing

These are just the best examples of these techniques and art pieces. I really enjoyed gelli printing this year and have a home decor project lined up for a gelli printed collage.  I also would like to complete a lot of my unfinished projects in 2015 as well.  The basement renovation should be complete around the end of January and then I can move into my studio space and unpack all my supplies. We also will be done with home renovations for a while, so I hope to have more time for making art as well.

Wishing you all a great New Year!

Foiling on Velvet

I have watched this Angie Hughes' YouTube video many times, where she foils on velvet  (skip to 12:50 for the start of the demo part)  and I recently added to my colored foil collection so I am finally giving it a try. I am not going to describe each step, as the video goes into a lot of detail. (Things like, always cover the whole project with parchment paper when ironing, and using a "craft" iron so you don't ruin your good one, are important points).

In the US, the Bond-a-web that is mentioned in the video is called Wonder Under. I can usually find a small cut of it (1/3 yard or so) in the clearance bin at Joanns every time I go. I decided to paint one side of my Wonder Under, which is something from one of Kim Thittichai's books. I used watered down Lumiere paints. Here is a picture of the painted Wonder Under. The backing paper crinkles due to the watery paint.

I used black velvet that I bought at a estate sale. I am unsure of it's fiber content; it doesn't look or feel like polyester, but I haven't given it a burn test. I ironed the painted Wonder Under to the velvet, after I had cut out some circle and wave shapes, and removed the paper backing just from the circles.

I sprinkled on large silver glitter and fine green glitter to the circles, covered it with parchment paper and ironed it so they would stick to the Wonder Under.

I then removed the backing paper on the lower portion.

The painted wonder under looks lovely, but I am going to add some foil.

I tried to use punchinella/sequin waste to create patterns in the foil, like Angie did, but I think my iron was too hot as I had a hard time removing the sequin waste. It was ironed to the Wonder Under in places. I think in general I was using too hot of an iron for the foiling. I had a difficult time removing the foil carrier sheet in places as well. I also think since I had painted the Wonder Under, it did not adhere as strongly to the velvet, and pulled up in places when I was pulling the foil carrier sheet off. I did iron some more painted Wonder Under over some of the holes and it blended in with the original layer pretty well. For the remaining exposed velvet in the upper portion, I will probably paint with Lumiere paints.

You can see the blue circles where I used sequin waste as a resist when foiling.

On the pink section in the middle, I used magenta glitter and pink foil. I did iron on some black glitter next to some of the circles, which you can see in this picture.

I think I am done adding foil at this point. Angie often adds a layer of colored or black sheer fabric over the top, which may look nice on this since it is pretty bright and gaudy.  I am thinking of cutting it up and using it in another project, where I think the bright colors would look great. I will be experimenting more with this technique as I still have quite a bit of foil, and already have some painted Wonder Under as well.

Wet felting waterlilies

I've been making some ocean/water themed art pieces lately, and decided to do a felted piece with waterlilies.  I think it turned out great. I still need to dry felt some details and do some machine stitching, but I really like how it has a Monet-like feel to it.

Here I have laid out all of the roving and put a piece of tulle over it.  I was worried about the purple and green roving felting correctly. I had bought it as a hand-dyed blend, and noticed it was actually wool superwash and I was concerned it would not felt. (Superwash is a wool than can be machine washed with less concern about felting or shrinkage).   There is white wool roving as a base, and I did add some thin wool over the top as well. It felted just fine.

Here it is after felting but while it was still wet. You can see the white silk pieces aren't very visible here.

Here it is after it dried. I think its lovely. I will add a bit of dry felting and I want to machine stitch to make the lily pads pop.

Close-up. The white dots are the flowers.

Wet felting is a lot of work and takes some patience but the results make me smile.

Summer Art Market this weekend in Denver

Please visit our booth at the Art Students League's Summer Art Market this weekend in Denver. I am sharing a booth with Sabyl Horneck, at Booth #12.

Visit Our Sponsor Thanks to Our Sponsors Your Guide to Summer Art Market 2014  Summer Art Market is this weekend! Here is a guide to all of the fun activities going on throughout the weekend. June 7 | Saturday | 10 am - 7 pm June 8 | Sunday | 10 am - 5 pm 200 Grant Street | Denver Summer Art Market is presented by: Artist By Media Artwork from Classic to Contemporary   More than 260 Local Artists Click on media type to view a list of exhibitors.    Ceramics Cathy Avram Dwight Davidson  Sculpture Painting    and     Drawing  Ken Valastro Mark Friday Mixed Media  and Book Art Fiber Art  Rob Watt Jacqueline Webster  Photography Printmaking  Tony Ortega   Artist Demo Schedule Presented by:   Saturday, June 7th 10:00am - 10:45am:Creating Exciting Color                                                   with Doug Dawson 12:30pm - 1:00pm:  Quick Studies in Oil                                   with Andrea Kemp 2:00pm - 2:30pm:    Using Analogous Color                                   with Doug Dawson 4:15pm - 5:00pm:    Printmaking Techniques                                                 with Tony Ortega Sunday, June 8th 11:15am - 12:00pm: The Still Life in Oil                                   with Clyde Steadman Observe Ceramic Wheel-Throwing  12:00pm - 1:00pm:   with Sarah Behling  1:00pm - 1:45pm:     with Cathy Avram 2:00pm - 3:00pm:     with Sarah Behling KidART Activities Presented by:   Saturday, June 7th  10:00am - 11:30pm:  Shrinky Dinks  12:00pm - 1:30pm:    Wind Socks  2:00pm - 3:30pm:      Butterflies are Free           Sunday, June 8th  10:00am - 11:30am:  Splat  12:00pm - 1:30pm:    Waterworld of Color      Music Schedule Presented by:  Saturday, June 7th  10:45am - 12:30pm: Eohippus 1:00pm - 2:00pm:     The Work Horse 2:30pm - 4:15pm:     MoDazz           5:00pm - 7:00pm:     Chris Daniels and the Kings Sunday, June 8th  12:00pm - 1:45pm:   El Duet 2:00pm - 2:45pm:     Mudra Dance Studio    3:00pm - 4:45pm:     Matic                 Artful Garden Cafe Presented by: Enjoy delicious food in our Artful Garden Cafe plus beer from: and wine from: Plan Your Trip  Here is a link to check the weather for this weekend, it is expected to be great. Use RTD to plan your trip down to the Summer Art Market. Check here for the Visitor Parking Map Robert Spooner | Best of Show 2013 Forward this email

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