A Couple Of New ,Small, Projects

My dearest friends - who are really my family- just moved into a new home after a long and frustrating year. I wanted to send them a card, of course, but I wanted it to be more than just a Hallmark card - so I made this for them. The front is raw linen fabric; the inside is muslin and I used C&T's double sided fusible Fast-2-Fuse as the stabilizer. It's been a favorite product for my art cards for some time - and now it is available in bot regular and heavy weight.  The inside of the card contains a lot of "home" related quotes and warm wishes. My cyber friend, & artist extraordinaire, Julie Wildman, wrote the word "Rejoice" on a book mark that she gave to me and I have tried to copy her style. If I could afford to take a class from the calligrapher who teaches this sort of gestural calligraphy I would .. but in the meantime I need to practice from lettering samples from Julie!  I had to have a chirping bird since we all enjoy the winged ones so much.  This was a fun card to make - I enjoyed playing with a cut-out design. Of course, as always, I also now see many ways that I could have made this card better!

As always remember that you can double click on the images to get more close up

This next little project was a Creative Troupe "call-out" from C&T. Their "call-outs" are fun to do and there are some goodies offered in exchange for the play time.  This "call-out" was to play with the newest Lutradur product - ultra light weight. I printed my photographs on the Lutradur - using the seasons as a theme; added some color enhancement with inks and paint as needed and then backed the prints with vintage kimono silks and added lettering and skewers wrapped in ribbon knitting yarn. I received the package with the Lutradur a week ago yesterday and, since I knew I was in for a busy week, I finished and mailed it by Wednesday. Phew! That was a bit of a rush for me !

Each 'card' is 4"X6" - I think I would have preferred making the images less close together 

- but that's hindsight now - so I will know better for the next 'seasonal' project!

Happy Sunday to all!

Quilts: More experiments is Transparency

I have become somewhat obsessive in my quest for a combination of transparency and quilt. The process' have sparked my imagination more than anything has for a long time - and it is a quest that will take some play time and experiments for some time to come!

This face began as a thrift store sheer curtain panel....one of those polyester things that were so in vogue at one point and, who knows, maybe they still are! I thought it would be fun to see how much of an image I could get on it. I used Golden Digital Medium in Clear Semi Gloss and was rather surprised that it would really well .. better, in fact, that a lot of other base materials I have tried recently! Imagine that! Wonder if I can find some more sheer panels cheap now?! Sorry about the blue cast on this photo - it was a cloudy day and Photo-shopping it seem to just make it worse so I gave up.

These are two separate images. The one on the left is made from the the sheer polyester curtain panel  and the one on the right  was printed on Lutradur Lightweight.  I am doing a couple of small pieces for C&T Publishing - using some of the products that they sell in, I hope, a variety of unusual ways. The Lutradur is from them and the face, which I have called 'Balance' is going to be sent to them. Sure hope that they will like it! Since they gave me the product I added C&T's link for for it but Pellon makes it so it's available from other places too.  C&T has some great things going on so it is worth a visit to their website to have a look! They offer "give-away" promotions & coupons - plus they have a great newsletter that you can sign up for. I am also playing around with another Lutradur product that C&T sent to me - black Lutradur!  I'll have to show you some of the thoughts I am working on using the black Lutradur in another post! As an aside - Joggles, one of my favorite mixed media emporiums, also sells Lutradur in a variety of weights.

Here's the full face. I used kimono silk from Ah!Kimono for the borders and I am totally happy with the way the transparency effect I was able to get using the Lutradur.  I still have a little bit of primping and ironing to do on this piece but all in all I am happy with the experiment and hope that C&T will be too !  Next up I will be making another small quilt similar to this using the curtain panel print! I am enthralled with the concept of transparency & fabrics and can't wait to see where my experiments take me next!