Score!!!!

So... you have to understand that normally, when I go to a Home Depot or other building supply store, it's usually not to buy things to use for projects around the house.  Those are my "Other" art stores!  But recently, I began a household project... painting the interior.  We have lived here almost 8 years, and I have only painted one wall in the house until recently!  So this week, I started painting the living room.  One wall is to be "Spiced Pumpkin", the rest will be off-white.  One challenge has been that the walls are "texturized", which means a lot more work to get even coverage!  Here is the first coat:

I know you can't see it from this shot, but there are lots of "holidays"... spots where the paint didn't cover the white below.  And I was using a roller to apply the paint.  Where I was trying to get the paint into the crevices, I spread it thinner than other areas, so the whole wall looked very splotchy.  Last night, I started thinking about maybe trying some "Faux Finish" techniques, and decided I would look at the store today to see what they had:

    SCORE!!!!!

Now, I had pretty much already decided that I would apply a second coat to the wall before deciding if I wanted to go to all the effort of using faux finish, and I have completed the second coat and am pleased with how it looks now.  But I absoloutely had to have this kit!  It's a Martha Stewart product, but I don't really car who made it... what I'm excited about is what I can do with these to create Complex Cloth!  Woo-hoo!!!  When I took Melly Testa's class in 2007, she suggested picking up faux finish tools for creating Complex cloth, but I never found any until today... I will definitely post pix when I have time to play with these!  In the meantime, I may also use them somewhere in the house on wall decor, but I'm thinking the texturized walls might be a bit of a challenge!  Anyone know how to remove the texture from walls?  Just kidding!  

Yummy stuff!

Saturday, my friend and inspiration, Melly, had an Open Studio to sell some of her fabulous creations... she is taking a trip back east soon, and wanted to cover the cost with the proceeds of her sales. I went to see if I could find something to buy, and could have spent a lot more money... she does beautiful work! But I did come home with 2 pieces of Complex Cloth, and some hand dyed embroidery
floss:

I'm really thrilled with my purchases, and can't wait to use them! Thanks, Melly...

Nuts over netting

I was in the mood to play yesterday, and wanted to do some more experimenting with my net mesh... which used to be a vegetable bag before I tore into it. I went thru my stash and found a piece I dyed using leftovers... not really crazy for the color combination, so I figured "what the heck", might as well play with it! So first I stretched the netting over an area of the fabric, then used a roller to apply dishwashing gel with bleach over the netting. I removed the netting and let the area dry, then washed the gel out. I had been a little heavy-handed with the first try, and ended up with some areas where the netting design didn't show, and the color was mostly discharged leaving a pale area. I repeated the experiment, only this time I used very little gel on the roller, and got a better "print" of the netting design. Today, I soda soaked the fabric and let it dry. Then I stretched the netting over the two places I had discharged yesterday, only slightly altering the shape and direction of the netting. Then I lightly rolled over the area with thickened dye. Yup! That was the answer! I now have layers of netting over the piece, and I love the depth and shading! I'm letting it batch, but may go back and add more layers to the remaining fabric. What a rush! I'm finally beginning to feel like I have a better handle on 'complex cloth' than I ever have since I started experimenting with it!