Red tree collage finished

Last week, I posted a collage I was working on of red trees, that post is here.

This is about where it was when I left off on that last post.I have all the basic shapes but needed to add details.

I did a wash of paint on the blue areas and the green areas to make them more uniform in color. I painted in blue "holes" in the trees to show the sky peeking through the branches. I did do some stamping of mesh in blue in the sky areas and used a spring whisk to stamp spirals in the red trees.

I stamped a floral stamp in the sky areas and added branches to my trees. I also added shadows of the tree trunks on the ground.

Not the best picture, the battery in my good camera was dead. I entered this in a show and will know later in the week if it got in.

Wet felting a mountain landscape

I decided to do a wet felted landscape from this picture at Rocky Mountain National Park. I really liked all the yellow aspens and thought it would look great in felt.

First I set up my table. I have clear plastic on top of the wood table to protect it, then a towel to absorb the water during felting. I am using a bamboo matchstick blind as my rolling mat. I then put clear plastic on top to hold some of the water in during felting.

I put two layers of white wool roving, the first one horizontal and the second layer running vertical.  I probably should have put another layer or two, since it is a fairly large piece, but didn't have enough in my stash. Since my landscape is horizontal and I plan on laying my colored roving horizontally, I made sure the last layer of white was vertical to help the layers felt together. Here are my two white layers and I am just starting the sky in the upper left.

I finished the sky and then did the foreground of aspens and evergreens. The dark green texture is from some loopy wool yarn.

I started on the mountains and the middle ground between the mountains and the trees.

I added black details around the mountains to make the scene more graphic. From previous felting, I know it is important to have a lot of contrast or the whole picture tends to look the same value.

It's good to photograph the work and see if it feels balanced.  I felt like the yellow section and green section were too divided so I added some more yellow in the green area, and some green in the yellow area. I also had my husband look at it and he thought my mountains were too small so I made some of them taller.

I put tulle netting over the wool and wet it with hot water and soap that I sprinkled on. I gently started rubbing the wool with my fingers, and after the whole thing was flattened, I rubbed harder and used a plastic roller that I have for this stage.

After probably 15 minutes, I took the tulle off to see if any of the wool had shifted or if I needed to add anything. I thought the sky was a bit too uniform so I added some additional silk and bamboo fibers. I then put the tulle back on and rubbed with my hands a bit more.

Once the fibers were holding together, I took the tulle off and put a piece of clear plastic to cover the top, I rolled the assembly (bamboo mat, clear plastic, wool felt, clear plastic) over a pool noodle and rolled it for 5-10 minutes. I unrolled it, turned the felt/plastic sandwich 90 degrees, re-rolled it, and rolled for another 5-10 minutes. I did this multiple times until the piece had felted and had shrunk quite a bit. I then rinsed all my equipment to get the soap off. I rinsed the felt piece separately in the sink with cool water to remove the soap. Then I filled the sink with hot water, enough to cover the piece, and let the piece sit in the hot water for 10 minutes. (It was folded up to get it to fit in the sink, at this stage it's okay to manhandle it a bit). I then squeeze as much water out of it that I can and go to my work table to roll it some more while it's still hot.  I put a new towel down on my table, then the rinsed (soap-free) bamboo mat and the felt. I don't use any plastic at this stage. I rolled the felt in the mat again, unrolling, turning, and re-rolling until I feel the work was completely felted. I did at one point feel like it needed to be given another hot bath, as this helps with the felting, so I did rinse it in cool water and then in hot, and rolled some more.

The bamboo mat made the felt a bit rippled looking so I pinned it flat to some foam board to dry. I'll post another picture once it is dry as the silk pieces usually lightens up.

Here is a photo of the piece after it dried. The silks really lighten up when they are dry. I will do a little needle felting to add some details and may do some free motion stitching as well.

Red Tree Collage

 I liked my felted red trees so much that I decided to do a collage of them.

I wanted it to have a layered look so I spray painted these stencils with the general color scheme using Liquitex Acrylic spray paints.

I then started collaging papers on my wood substrate. I would only need paper where the substrate would be visible through the stencils.

Here is the finished paper collage before attaching the stencils.

Here it is right before I glued the stencils down. 

I did add more paint over the collaged papers to help them blend with the stencils (and added a tree trunk and branches on the left tree, blue sky showing through some of the leaf areas). I showed it to my husband and he kept asking what the letters spelled. They were still too prominent, not just a texture or layer like I had originally planned. This definitely was not what I had in mind and decided the stencils had to come off.

I decided to paper collage over the whole surface after the stencils were removed. Here is a progress photo.

The collage part is mainly done. I want to use some washes of paint to darken the sky and make the grass greener. I will use paint and some more paper bits to help the trees look like trees instead of red balloons.  This is way better than when it had the stencils on it and I think it will be great in the end. Which is a good thing, since I have another one with yellow trees and a purple sky that still has the stencils on it and will need work as well.

Better pictures next time, I was in the basement studio and my good camera's battery was dead.

Skeleton Tshirts

Using a plastic Halloween skeleton as a stencil/mask, I made some Tshirts with glow in the dark fabric paint.

I put the skeleton on one Tshirt and sprayed the paint.

Then I lifted the skeleton and pressed it paint side down onto another Tshirt.  (The skeleton is hinged at the joints so it's not the same pose every time).

I put these in the sun, then went in a dark room, and the "glow" is very faint. The directions said it works better on lighter colors, so the black Tshirt may be too dark to let the paint glow correctly.

I plan to put these on Etsy next week, GingerWilsonStudio on Etsy

Silver globe

I really liked how my chalkboard globes turned out, see this post.  I scored another globe recently and decided to spray paint it silver. I think it looks great.

Denver Modernism show this weekend, come visit!

Please visit fellow artist Simone Maxwell and myself at our booth (#98) at the Modernism show. We will have mod-inspired art as well as vintage finds, chalkboard globes, and many other items.

Hope to see you there! Friday is VIP night for $50 a person, and Saturday and Sunday general admission is $8.

Hearts from recycled fence pickets

I really love the shape of the Mexican heart milagros, with a decorative edge and flames above. I had seen a cool mirror shaped like one at the Cherry Creek Art festival and thought it would be cool to make some artistic ones.

Recently, we replaced a small portion of our wood fence due to structural issues (a strong wind almost took a portion down). We had put the leftover wood in a pile until we had time to cut it down and put it in the trash. The longer it sat there, the more I thought this would be great for my hearts. It is great to re-use the wood and will give my hearts a rustic feel. So I took five boards and was able to get three hearts from it. The larger ones are about 21".

Here is my first set of boards. I glued (and eventually) screwed the wood strip to them to hold them together.  Usually it took more than one strip to keep the assembly from being kind of wobbly.

I used a hand held jigsaw to cut my shapes. When I planned my design, I made sure I didn't make any tight curves that this saw couldn't handle. Having made three of these, there are some things I would do differently. Make sure the wood strip on the back is not going to get in the way of the saw. I also think cutting the end pieces separately, before assembly, would be best as the saw vibrates so much that these pieces sometimes came unattached. Even with the glue and screws, the wood is old and these pieces would just fall off.

Here is the backside. I then spray painted the back and edges black.

 Front side:

Heart 2:

Heart 3:

I gessoed the fronts with white gesso in the center, and black gesso around the edges and flames.

I painted the smaller heart turquoise in the middle. I plan to leave some black details, but most of the black gets covered with metal leaf.

I painted details with gold paint to give me a road map for the metal leaf and the black details.

I knew I wanted this heart to have two types of metal leaf. I applied glue only where I wanted the gold leaf.  I used a glue that dries tacky which allows the leaf to adhere.

I use a stiff painting brush to first press the leaf into the glue, then brush the excess leaf away. I then used a rainbow (oil-slick looking) metal leaf for the other part of the frame area. I always put any scrap foil pieces I brush off into a plastic container to use later on another project.

 I then mixed some black paint with some glazing medium to paint some shadows on the heart center and on the gold frame.

 Red Heart 1, before adding black shadows. Foil was from my mixed container of foils, some copper, gold, rainbow, etc.

 Red Heart 1, finished.

 Detail, Red Heart 1

Red Heart 2, before adding black shadows.

Red Heart 2, finished. Gold foil was used.

Red Heart 2, detail

I really like how these turned out!