Adding color to copper using heat

I am working on a project and I want to include some metal in the piece.  I decided to add some copper mesh and strapping but wanted to change the color of it, which can be done by using heat.

Here I have two pieces of copper mesh, a piece of copper strapping, my pliers with rubber coated handles, and my embossing gun. I don't know if they still make copper strapping. It is used for plumbing and it seems like all I ever see now is galvanized steel strapping, which will not work for this technique.

(Note:  heating metal can be dangerous and the tools and metal can get very hot. Never touch the metal while heating. Let it cool before you pick it up.  If you need to pick up the metal during or after heating, use pliers with rubber coated handles, so the heat won't transfer to the tool.  When heating metal, do it on a flame resistance surface. Also, work in a well ventilated area. I do this on my concrete driveway.)

I used my embossing tool to heat this piece. You can see it is much more orange at the top. At this area, I moved my tool continuously and slowly.  At the bottom where it is turning purple and white, I went much slower and did stop briefly in spots before moving on.

It took a while to color that piece. I decided to use my tiny butane torch for the other pieces.

(Note: If you decide to use a butane torch, please read all the safety instructions that come with it. I am not going to go into how to use a butane torch, because I don't want to be liable if you catch your pants on fire!).

Here are my results using the torch. The embossing gun does allow a bit more control regarding color changes.  With the torch, it is easy to go from slightly purple to spotty white very quickly. I did like that I could sort of make a pattern while moving the torch around.

Here is the strapping. It was hard to make it the red-orange color and it went to purple-white very quickly.

This is the back side of the strapping, it had a lot more of the orange color and a lot more color variation. I guess I should look at the back sides of the copper mesh, maybe their back sides are interesting as well.

I then cut circles out of the metal mesh. I tried to use my die cutter, but the mesh was too strong so I had to cut them by hand. I then used E6000 to glue the circles to some gears.

Here are a bunch of items I am going to add to my project.  It's quite a handsome collection.

Fabric collage

Back in April, I took a class with Cas Holmes, and I finally have some time to explore some things.  I love the colors and patterns in fabric (either commercial fabrics, or my own dyed, painted, or surface designed fabrics)and am working on creating fabric collages with free motion stitching, and/or hand embroidery.

For these pieces I layered different fabrics and glued them to one another using fabric medium.  Fabric medium is not a super strong adhesive, and I could pull the layers apart if I wanted to.  I had previously tried this with watered down PVA, but thought the glue was too plastic-y, and I had a lot of trapped air bubbles which didn't look very good.

Here are my glued pieces.  I think this adhesive worked great on cotton type fabrics, but the polyester sheer looks strange and plastic-y.  The thick pink crocheted piece did not glue on at all.  I plan to work on machine stitching and embroidering on these, but think they are a good start.

This one has air bubbles/wrinkles in the pink shibori area

 

Art experiment, sunprinting on lightweight interfacing

Art Experiment is a a series of posts using supplies which I own but have rarely (or never) used. Failure or success is not important, it is trying something different and seeing what can come from it.  There are three goals: try something new, use something in my supply stash, and have fun/experiment in the studio.

Sun printing on interfacing

I have posted about sun printing with Setacolor transparent paints probably half a dozen times. I love it.  I have been experimenting with my stash of lightweight interfacing and saw it as a great excuse for more sun printing.  I am using a lightweight polyester interfacing that does not have any fusible on it.

I laid fabric(s) underneath to see if it could be printed as well as the interfacing (top layer). The interfacing is pretty thin and I know the paint will easily soak through to the bottom layer. I just didn't know if the interfacing would prevent the other piece from sun printing correctly. The fabric ended up printing very well, but the colors were a bit lighter.

Here is my interfacing.

My fabric and interfacing pinned to a foam board, and dampened with a spray bottle.

I then put down different paint colors with a brush, and place stencils on top, then set it in the sun. Now that I live in breezy Nebraska, I pinned all my stencils down so they wouldn't blow away.  I put a couple bricks on my foam board for the same reason.

After the stencils were removed.

Cotton fabric on the left, interfacing on the right.

I like the transparency of the interfacing, so I can layer it over other fabrics.

 Then I did another one with black paint.

I wanted to try one with puddle painting the interfacing and under-fabric.  (I make a puddle of different paints, and smoosh my damp fabric in it, I have a previous post about puddle painting here)  The interfacing and fabric got so wrinkly from the smooshing that I didn't think I would be able to smooth it out well enough to lay stencils on it, so I let them dry with wrinkles, which sun print in their own way.

Interfacing wet.

Interfacing dry.

 Fabric, almost dry. (This was the lining of a dress from the 60's, I think it is polyester?)

One more piece. This one has many smaller fabric pieces under it.  I do dampen the fabric layer before adding the interfacing on top.  This allows the paint to absorb better, and also allows me to smooth out any wrinkles and bubbles (which will sun print if left wrinkly).

I got some cool texture here  (on the interfacing).

 I love these two fabric prints. I will either use them as-is or do a bit of hand stitching.

Sun printing with leaves and branches

I love to sun print using Setacolor transparent paints.  We were trimming some trees the other day, and thought the trimmings would make great sun prints. Here is one of the first pieces that used cherry tree branches.

Here is what the fabric for this piece originally looked like.

I also sun printed on these two fabrics. A green silk.

An ice dyed cotton. I didn't know what to use this fabric for after I ice dyed it. The repeating pattern was so strong.

Here is the cherry piece after painting and placing the branches.

The silk piece.

The ice dyed piece.

The results for each.

I experimented with some additional fabrics.  Many of them were not quite as good as the first few. I think part of the reason was it was getting late in the day, so the sun was not as direct or as strong.


This piece is originally a sheer that had some splotchy green dye on it (kind of looked like camo).  

This piece is interfacing over cotton (sometimes I put a piece of cotton underneath, when I am painting a transparent fabric, since the paint easily bleeds through the transparent layer. This way I get two pieces at the same time).  I leaned this on a fence to try to get the sun to hit it directly.(It was getting very late in the day and the fence was the only place still getting some sun.)  It looks like this made the paint run (close up below). I think it looks a lot like a watercolor painting. I will definitely try having them dry vertically instead of horizontally to see if I can recreate this. I did pin my leaves to the board so they would stay in place when drying upright.

 Failed sun print on interfacing with cherry tree branches.

 Failed sun print of cherry tree branches on ice dyed fabric.

Sun print on previously dyed fabric using cherry tree branches.

I will be doing a post on Thursday doing sun printing on interfacing using stencils. I go into more detail about my sun printing process in that post if you want more details. I also have quite a few sun printing posts from last summer as well.