Swap Books, Cartouche and a little bubble!

Had fun this week getting a few things out the door. My entry into ATASDA’s Cartouche exhibition went Friday so it better make it to Sydney by Thursday. Here’s the finished result:

The finished entry

Took heaps of photos as I may not see it again. Its all sparkly with metallic paint and silk fabric so it wasn’t that easy to get a shot of it. After that moved onto my swap book project with Barbara M from Adelaide. The progress so far is:

Barbara's CoverMy Page in her book

I was trying hard to keep to her colours. Had to put a wash over my page to tone it down. Its going to be a process of slowing getting myself there. Barbara is trying out a different product on each of the pages she is doing to have a play with different mediums and materials.

My Page in Barbara's book

Another group I belong to is doing a swapbook too. My cover for this is made out of stuff I had piled on my sewing table – all the offcuts from various things. Thus I have decided to call my book “fragments” and each person will be encouraged to use fragments from past projects to create their page and then write a little note on the back to say what the materials were from. Here’s the cover:

Fragments

As usual its sparkly! Also reflects the colours I’m into at present – coppers, greens, black. I think this swapbook group is going to be very interesting!

Lastly I was well pleased with a little experiment I did for an upcoming piece on an old shipwreck. Got stuck into the puff paste and a bit of lutradur to produce…

Rust and ruin!

Painted the background fabric for the art “quilt” and will now go forth and paste it. Love the texture of the rusting metal of the ship so that’s the base and over that will go a bit of machine embroidery. Think I am pushing the group’s definition of art “quilt” as I’m not that quilty really but I do have 3 layers and yes, some stitching will hold those 3 layers together!

Have a great week and a lovely Easter everyone. Looks like its going to rain heaps for us here in Brisbane. A traditional Easter downpour!

Paperclay fun

Popped back to Adelaide on the weekend so I’m now chasing my tail to catch up with everything. Been playing with a bit of paperclay. I love this stuff – air dries and you can stitch through it. Here’s a small sample of some of the bling I’ve been creating…

Paperclay Bling

It paints up really, is very light and easy to manage. Here’s a few of the unpainted shapes. I think I created about three dozen!!

Unpainted Bling

Its all to go on a little piece I’m creating for ATASDA but I’m coming down to the wire on the dead line as I’ve only got till April 9 to get it in. The full piece is currently like this…

A little textile..

Its a work in progress which must progress a bit faster. I was checking out the placement of all the little pieces for this shot.  Also its handy having a copy of where everything is meant to go. OK, back to stitching. Have a great week everyone!

Transfer Painting

Had a bit of fun transfer painting the other day. I had painted all these pieces of paper back when I couldn’t find all the equipment for some dyeing that I wanted to do. So I changed to transfer (disperse dyes) painting instead. Here’s a few:

Painted paper

I used ordinary A4 paper that I had lying around. I tried a few things like the old butterfly splat (fold paper in half), wetting the paper with a spray bottle then applying paint, applying paint then spraying water and just painting it on with a paint brush.

After a few days I got back to it to try the ironing part as I got distracted bya few other activities in the mean time. First of all I had to get ut of “ironing” headspace as I put the iron on synthetic instead of linen!! Without a hot iron not much transferring takes place .

Transferred to fabric!

What a difference some of the colours were. The only thing I would say is beware the yellow – it transfers very brightly! I love the way browns come out blue or blacks come out green.

I had a piece of pale green sation from my friend Donna so gave that a bit of a makeover and ended up with a piece that looks very sea inspired.

Sea Foam

 I love the way you can just keep on printing with the sheets to get lots of lovely overlays and playfulness in the patterning. Did a few papers with flicking paint onto the sheet and using a resist of thread and paper – very interesting space! Now I’m off to burn the edges of one of my pieces…have to make sure I have the bucket of water ready just in case!