Two Things Had To Try Yesterday

There have been two things that I have wanted to try my hand at. I decided that, although I was not very well equipped for options , today would be the day to give them a try with what little I had on hand. There are no stores any where near where I live - so going out to pad the selections was not in the cards for me

One of the "had to try" things is Silk Fusion. I got the book "Take Silk" by Judith Pinnell out of the library. I adore books - I can usually get a head start on what a want to learn by using a good book. I had little on to experiment with, but I just had to try. I did have a SMALL bit of glorious red tussah silk from Denise at Try our Designs and some Jo Sonya's Textile Medium so I figured what the heck - how bad could it be ?! I just good not get my camera to deal well with the luster of the fibers - the light - whether sunlight or indoor light - just bounced off....and I am too tired to fiddle with them in Photoshop - though I may try to take some better pictures again another time - when the painting is finished and I have it cut up or whatever it decides to become

The First two photos at the top show:
The silk fiber laid out on netting - two layers at right angles.
Covered in water and Jo Sonya's textile medium and then left to dry.

Next - I have begun to paint a design... once again you can see the camera woes I was experiencing !

I DID get a bit to antsy and peeled it off the netting a bit too soon - probably why I got some ripples in the finished sheet . Oh ! What a beautiful thing to behold though. The shine and the colors are awesome. I ca't wait to order some more silk and make some more!


The other, rather simple thing, I wanted to explore was simply using tissue paper with textile medium. When my order came from EQuilter it was wrapped in this divine yellow tissue paper - so once again I figured I would try it - and see what happens . Maybe it will become a round file addition - or maybe I can cut it up. I really cannot imagine what I might do with this one - but I am sure I will find something .

I love playing - just doing things that make no sense to see what happens. Sometimes magic and sometimes not.

Sliced Paper Doodling

Not that time ever weighs heavily in my hands - but I thought I would try doodles with sliced, rainbow colored Origami Paper. making this reminded me of Tibetan Sand Painting since a slight breeze "improves" the design so easily! I am not sure how many of these I will do but I am using this one as a small study for a Chakra related quilt theme I have in mind.


This spider mum bud amazes me - I want to paint it ! I can feel the tension in those petals as they strain to open. Talk about nature's doodles ! Brilliant ! Hope everyone has a wonderful day - or evening as the case may be !

Block enhancing

In betwixt doing the laundry, cleaning and cooking that are a regular part of my " before I go back to the day job" ritual on Tuesdays, I took some time to play with one of the blocks I did yesterday. This block was was printed with the dessicated stamp pads (read: dried out) and it was pretty pallid looking all in all. I wanted to keep it fairly monochromatic and low key. When I started adding some color though before I realized it - time had flown by. It's a bit more vibrant than this photo shows but still gentler looking than my usual work. I think my next big investment will be in a better digital camera....though I love my small Olympus. I tried fiddling with the white balance too - and that did not seem to make any improvement. Oh well - you'll get the idea and this is not too far off to begin with. First I guess I will have to stop buying paints ... and that's a bit too hard to do !

For some time now, I had been wanting to get some Golden Fluid Acrylic paints to try.
The darn things are really pretty spendy though and I thought that I was never going to be able buy them. I generally use Blick for my art supplies - but found a set from artsuppliesonline that has 16 one ounce bottles - on sale no less. I splurged ! Now, I will get to try them out ! I'm also planning to place my next order for Stewart Gill paints really soon too.... end of the month I hope. I HAD to order some more stamp block material and since Blick did not carry Speedy-Cut from Speedball - which Joggles carries - I am going to try the Blick EZ Cut material this time. Uh oh ! This really could be an obsession I feel coming on ! Now how to combine it with glass, wool and photographs ?!

More Block Printing Fascination

Well - I am really hooked on block printing now.

I had been saving two 'smushed' egg cartons just because I liked the way they looked. I decided to draw something similar and try making a stamp from the drawing. I like the results and now have to order more block - fast!

Below, the photo at the top is the egg carton that was my inspiration - it's beside the drawing I did. The the next photo on the shows the cut block material next to the "proof" of the stamp in my sketch book.



















Finally, here is a piece of fabric printed with the block. The left side was printed with some rather dessicated stamp pads I had from long ago & the right side is done with some textile paints. Why did I not know about this FUN long ago??!!