Where has the time gone!

I can't believe I've let almost a month pass without a post... again!  Lots of projects keeping me busy, then the 4th yesterday... time to catch up!
First off, I was busy  writing a series of articles for "...And Then We Set It On Fire" about creating fabric with various surface design techniques:

Here's the end result - you can see how I got there if you follow the link and look for Round Robin, Solo Style posts.

I've also been doing some Autumn Leaves pieces using stamps I cut out of sponges:

And most recently, I did another plaster bowl and embellished with more sponge stamps, this time in shapes reminiscent of the southwest:

 

In between I had other things to do like housework (yuk!) and a trip to Phoenix.  Then yesterday, I got to ride on a float in our July 4th parade:

I took pix of the crowd along the way - lots of folks turned out for the event! 

And here I am (left) with a friend on the float, with my last minute painted sun visor... had great weather for the parade, followed by a nice monsoon storm to keep things cool!

Okay, time to get ready to visit the local nursery... now that Monsoon season is here, I can think about planting, and I need to find some trees!  Have a great July, and I hope to post more soon!

More Gelli-Art experiments

I posted here a few days ago about my new Gelli-Art printing plate, and wanted to keep you posted on my further experiments.  I started with acrylic artists' paints on day one.  Today, I did some experiments with Tulip fabric paints I had in my collection, and tomorrow I plan to try thickened dyes.  Also, I am using a stencil and some hand made stamps in today's experiments - the first day, I used some grasses and leaves collected from my yard.  Below are some pictures of my process and results today:

First, I prepared my work area, selecting what paints I might want to use, getting my tools out and creating a stack of fabric pieces to work with.

I dug out my stencils and stamps... even found one rubbing plate, although the others are hiding somewhere!

I decided to use some Tulip Neon Fabric paints in Yellow, Orange, Lime Green and Hot pink.  Did not know until after the first print that they have glitter in them!  Anyway, above is my first print using a stencil from The Crafters Workshop... nice, not too heavy in pattern, and I actually remembered to pull the ghost print (see left side of picture). 

I reloaded the plate, this time adding the hot pink, and selected one of my hand made stamps to do multiple stampings... see photo below for the finished print.

Added more paint, and used another hand made stamp

Love the colors on the stamp!  And darn it,  I forgot to pull a ghost print!  Just about this time, my camera told me to replace the batteries, and unfortunately, these paints dry really fast!  So All I got was the print from the plate.

Here are the first two prints... I like how both of them came out.

This one was disappointing, but it's because the paints dried so fast that they did not adhere well to the fabric... if you look closely, you will see that they are curling on the top of the print.  But I can't blame the plate for that! 

This is a closeup of the first print, to show off the ghost print.

After two days of using paints, I am looking forward to using thickened dyes tomorrow... they stay wet a lot longer, so I'm sure to get some interesting results without having to rush so much!  I have pre-soaked some cotton muslin in soda ash solution, and they will be dry soon.  And I have a fresh supply of thickener to mix the dyes with, so I'd better get to it so I will be ready for tomorrow's session!  Bye for now...

More Stamp experiments

After playing with my French cursive stamp and fabric paint yesterday, I decided to take a trip to Michael's today to see if I could find a few more, plus some other supplies.  There are still good deals to be had out there at Michaels!  They were having a BOGOF sale on stamps, and I scored 4 really nice wood block stamps for a very reasonable price!  Also found a stencil to use on the t-shirt I referred to yesterday, although I'm having some difficulty finding Batik-EZ by Crafter's Pick.  It's supposed to be available at Michael's, but we have a small store, and they didn't have it.  So I got on the e-mail to Michael's and Crafter's Pick to see where I can get it.  Meanwhile, I decided to audition my new stamps, using some of the fabric paints I have on hand:

The picture above shows a Clock face and a fern... I have learned that not all stamps do well with fabric paint... it floods too easily, as the Clock face stamp did.  I think I will also need to get some metallic inks!  But I love the fern, both in metallic as well as regular fabric paints!

Above is the silk scrap from before, with fern and clock face added... love the fern!

Here is the fern and a post card stamp, using regular fabric paint which I smeared onto several layers of paper towel.  I ended up patting the paper towel over the post card stamp to get better coverage.

 Here's a closeup shot of the fern with black fabric paint... not too much!

And a closeup of the fern on silk with gold metallic paint.

The fern with gold metallic paint on the cotton sample I was working on yesterday.

Finally, a closeup of the post card stamp with black fabric paint.  Can't wait to get my Dyna-flo paints next week so I can give them a try!

New things to try!

I'm always looking to expand my skill set... there is just so much to try!  Well, today I found a tutorial on the Jacquard Products website for a Collage Batik on a t-shirt, so I printed it out.  I was looking over the materials list and instructions, and placed a couple of orders for products.  Then I realized I had one item in my stock already that might work... a rubber stamp with cursive writing.  I had never tried using it, and I also had some fabric paints I decided I could use to try it out.  Here are a couple of pictures of my experiments... one on cotton that had been stamped with vegetables and thickened dyes, and one on silk that had been dyed with color hue silk dyes after I did some shibori stitching:

Both of  these were scraps that have been languishing in my stash, so what better way to use them than to try another technique on them?  I really love this stamp, and I now have a better idea of how to apply the paint... I poured some on several layers of paper towels, spread it out a bit, pressed the stamp lightly in the paint, then pre-stamped on another paper towel to remove any excess.  I used the stamp a couple of times before applying more paint... that way I had some sharp images and some faint ones.  Oh, and here's the tutorial for the shirt... I will be trying this as soon as I get the rest of the supplies:

That was my whole reason for testing the stamp... I have been wanting to branch out a little to find new ways to decorate clothing, and this tutorial has introduced me to a new (to me) product: Batik-EZ from Crafter's Pick, which I hope to pick up at Michael's tomorrow!  Stay tuned...

  

September class

Sooo.... the students were hardly out of the driveway following the Tie-Dye Batik class last Saturday when my mind turned to planning for the upcoming Surface Design class September 8th! We are planning to cover several techniques, and I've been busy this week totally turning my studio upside down as I create samples of fabric using stamps, stencils, and other items to transform plain white fabric into one-of-a-kind fiber art! Here's a couple of photos of my studio taken this morning:

I finally had to get out of there for awhile... my Virgo self is screaming to straighten everything up and bring some order into the area, while my "Wild Child" is on a crazy trip... pulse quickening, head racing... too much stimulation! Here is a sample of a couple of things I'm working on:

These are just test prints, and I'm using up some thickened dyes I've had for awhile. I hope to complete some actual samples for the class that would include dyed fabric that uses several of the techniques to create a fabric that could be used for quilts or other fiber art projects. Several years ago, I participated in a couple of 'round robins' using a variety of techniques, and here's a covered notebook I made using one of the fabrics:

I'm really excited about this class, and hope to make it a veritable banquet of Surface Design techniques for the students! More to come...

Update: the class had originally been scheduled for August 4th, but due to scheduling conflicts has been rescheduled for September 8th, so I just updated the info above!

Stamping experiments

Awhile back, I purchased a couple of Adire gourd stamps to use on fabrics.  Today, I finally got around to working on my first experiment using the stamps.  In the past, I always loaded stamps with a foam brush, but I decided to try a slightly different method today, thanks to an inspiration from Kim Barron's blog post on tjaps.  First off, I mixed 3 parts of Dharma Trading's Superclear with 1 part water.  I poured 2/3 of the mix into a separate container and set it aside to use with other colors.  With the remaining 1/3 mix, I added 1/2 Tbsp of Aqua Marine Procion MX dye powder.  I mixed thoroughly to dissolve the dye powder.  Next I needed to create a 'stamp pad'.  I got a scrap of  "Warm and Natural" cotton batting, folded it in half and trimmed to fit into a plastic Stouffer's frozen entree container, which I use for a lot of my craft projects.  I could probably have used felt for this purpose, but had some small pieces of the batting handy.

Next, I spooned some of the thickened dye mix onto the batting and spread around so it would be a large enough area to cover the stamp.  Then I loaded the stamp and applied to pre-soaked and dried cotton that I had pinned onto a padded work surface.

So far, I really like how the batting worked as a stamp pad, and I will probably use that method to try some of my other stamps as well as the adire ones.  Next, I will probably try the adires with a new discharge stamp pad I ordered from Dharma Trading, which should be here in a few days.  I may try some of my cheap hand-made stamps with the discharge pad first.  Then I'm thinking I might try using my old stand-by discharge solution - dishwashing gel with bleach - on a pad.  I will do some side-by side tests with the purchased discharge pad and the home remedy and post pix so you can see the results, probably next week.  Meanwhile, I'm getting kind of inspired to get my stamps out and play around with them... maybe make some new ones as well, now that I have this new method of loading them!

    

Gone over the edge...

Yesterday, I was cutting up vegetables for dinner, and cut the top off a red bell pepper. I turned over the top, and immediately saw a stamp! Yikes! I've crossed the line!
Well, today, I just had to try it out, and here's a picture with the stamp:

Then I added some other stamps, sprinkled with rock salt, spritzed with water, covered and put it on the deck to batch in the sun:

I'm sure I will want to add more to this piece before I pronounce it 'done', but I'm going to wash it out and study it some before I decide what to do next. Great fun!

Playdate pix

My friend Linda and I got together today to do some deconstructed screen printing. I did it once last year in the class I took, but Linda had never tried it. In addition, I decided to stamp over a monoprint I did at the April play date, and also did a little discharge dyeing using my net bag over a monoprint from April. Here are pix of the results:


This is my screen printed 3 times with just thickener

Here is a closeup of the screen

I used turquoise dye for the 4th pull. As you can see, the design is starting to break down. By the time I pulled a 5th print, it had degraded considerably. We were using Dharma's Superclear for thickener instead of print mix or sodium alginate, and it wasn't as thick a consistency as I think we needed. Still, I like the design, and since I drew it on the screen with permanent marker, I can try it again with one of the other thickeners.

Here is Linda's screen - I think she did a great job, considering she has never tried this before, and just had my example to go by!


The yellow and orange on this piece was a monoprint I did last month. I added the turquoise aztec sun stamps today.

This was a fuschia monoprint I did last month; today, I used a foam roller to apply diswashing gel with bleach over nylon netting I had stretched over the fabric, creating the net design.

Class pictures

July 21, 2007 - Class is over... I'm very hopeful about using what I have learned. Here are examples of some of the techniques I learned:
1)Decomposition screen print. I pulled several prints off the screen before it began to disolve. Here are the first 4.

2) Flour paste screen that I then overdyed with a light dye wash

3) Detail of the flour paste screen printed on a monoprint. This is the actual print direction - the one above was reversed when I uploaded the picture.

4) Here, I used a piece of fabric I previously dyed using Low Water Immersion to experiment with discharge stamping. Stamping was done with dishwashing gel that has chlorine bleach as an active ingredient. The stamps were created using craft foam and two-sided carpet tape. The designs were drawn onto the foam, cut out and adhered to plexiglass squares.