Day of the Dead assemblage with dart board

A while ago, I picked up this cool dart board at the thrift store for 99 cents. I thought it would make a great assemblage.

I added one of the skulls I had made with plaster wrap, see this post. I knew I wanted to keep the design on the skull black and white to complement the dart board. I decided to do the skull pattern in yarn, which I had done before on another piece, see this post. Originally, I was not going to alter the dart board, but then decided it would be more interesting if I put a pattern on it as well. I also used yarn for the dart board decoration. It basically took one long day to finish it, but I think it is pretty darn cool.

Field trip to San Diego

We went to San Diego for a five day weekend and had a great time. The skies were hazy just about the whole time, but I was glad to get away from the 90 degree heat in Denver.

We did some easy hikes around Torrey Pines State Park. We saw some dolphins and a seal from one of the beach overlooks.

We went to the zoo. I used to love pandas when I was little. I even had a stuffed animal panda named Tsunami.

We ate too much. This was a red tortilla encrusted chili relleno at Prado.(This was amazingly good, except the cabbage).

We watched some surfers. The water was freezing.

We went to the San Diego Botanical garden. I have started an art quilt of water lilies so needed to take lots of reference photos.

We walked around the Balboa park area. There were quite a few museums, but we just stopped in the Timken.  In an area between the main drag and the zoo, there is an artisan area. It was really quite cool as most of the spaces were studios as well as shops, and there were quite a few artists working (an oil painter, a collage paper artist, etc.). I bought some handspun wool yarn that was silky soft and kind of kinky/curly.

And of course we walked on the beach and stuck our toes in the ocean.

Framed Day of the Dead skulls, Part 1

Michael's finally has some Halloween stuff coming in. I picked up a bunch of these paper mache skulls. They also had some ornate frames in the clearance section, so I picked some of those up as well.

I cut the back of the skull off so that it would lie flat in the frame (I left "tabs" to be able to attach the skulls later on).  I glued some paper behind the eye/nose/cheek openings so that I could fill them with paper clay. Paper clay need a surface to stick to and will not attach without something behind the opening. I mixed some matte medium into my paper clay so it would adhere well. After the paper clay dried, the skulls were gessoed and painted white. I will work on adding day of the dead touches to the skulls next week!

Foiling stamped images on fabric

In my last post, I showed some fabrics I had stamped with a skull stamp I had carved. I also used this stamp to stamp foil glue onto some fabrics. I had a hard time finding foiling adhesive at Michael's, I used Plaid glitter and foil adhesive, which was the only one I could find there.

Per the instructions, after waiting 24 hours, I ironed my Mylar foil onto the glue. The results are pretty poor. My feeling is that there was not enough adhesive on the fabric. I will probably try the glue again using a stencil instead, or find another glue.

This is probably the best one. This was a commercial fabric I over-painted and sun-printed on with Setacolor paints.

This was a marbleized fabric. This foiling looks horrible.

This one was on a Tshirt but the foiling looked very patchy.

I used Lumiere bronze paint to paint over the image.

Not super fantastic, but I will definitely wear it.

CO mixed media club, July meeting

For our July meeting, we used the new Speedball water based block printing ink for fabric to print soft cuts. Soft cuts are stamps/print blocks cut from linoleum, carvable surfaces fabricated by Speedball, Marvy erasers, etc.

We had carved some of these in a previous meeting so this was our chance to actually print with them if we hadn't done so before.

Sue Clarke's, I believe this stamp was actually made from sticky foam shapes attached to a substrate (printed on a book page).

Sue's print from Gayla's carved stamp.

Sue Clarke, Lots of layers, including a gelli plate print .

Sue Shenk's lovely flower garden

Gayla's prints from her carved block.

Gayla's prints in a different colorway. "Laundry line" carved stamp by Simone.

Simone's test print of some new stamps.

Simone's print on a Tshirt.

The start of Sabyl's print on a Tshirt.

Sabyl's test prints, her Tshirt looked like the one on the left when it was finished. 

Laurie's prints

This one was on a hand dyed fabric and looked really cool.

Enid's leaf print on patterned fabric. I wish I had a picture of her other print, which kind of reminded me of a quilt block pattern.

I spent a lot of time carving this skeleton stamp during our meeting, but love the results, printed on vintage linens.

The ink has to dry for a week but says it is permanent after that time. I will probably iron them anyway.  I printed some of my skulls with foil adhesive and will show the results after applying the foil tomorrow.


We had a fun day and had great results!

Copying a plastic skull with spray foam

So I saw a video online by Dr. Kreepy where he made copies of a plastic skull using spray foam.  I thought I would give it a try.

Here is my spray foam and my skull.

I cut my skull in two using a heavy duty Xacto knife. I cut a square in the backside to spray the foam into.  I rubbed the inside with petroleum jelly so that the foam would not stick to it.

I taped the skull back up with duct tape.

I sprayed the foam inside.  Over time, some of the foam would expand outside of the hole in the back and I would cut off this excess. At the end of day one, everything looked good and extra foam was not coming out.

 I walked away for three days and came back to this. Ack! My foam expanded and blew out the tape on the mold.

 

He's a bit misshapen.

 But from the front he doesn't look too bad.

I will definitely try this again, but use way less foam (I had filled it up about 90%) and add more duct tape to prevent it from blowing out the mold again.  I also left it to dry in the hot garage thinking this would speed up the drying time, but I think I will bring him in the house to dry the next time around.

Tie dye Tshirts now in my Etsy shop

I have added about ten of my tie dyed Tshirts to my Etsy store, here is the link if you may be interested! I hope to put some of my art on Etsy as well, in the near future.