Thursday, March 20, 2008

Peacocks Again

I was going through some of my digital photos and just found pictures of my art bra. I made it for a challenge a few years back. You had to make something out of a bra. So of course I did a peacock! I hope you don't think I am obsessed with peacocks (like that guy is with chickens in the commercial!!)

Sometimes inspiration strikes you in very strange ways . . . . .




The body was made from material and sewn to the middle of the bra. I painted it with luminere paints. The cups were painted with luminere as well as the feathers - which were made from a lace I found. I used a thin wire to help keep the feathers upright. A peacock feather type yarn was also sewn in to add more reality to the piece. The back was made to look like the back side of the peacock using a white fur and some actual feathers from a craft store.

Can't really wear it but it is mighty fancy!

Fabric Dye Experiments

Did you ever just have a vision in your head and wonder how you could make that work? Well I did. It involved trees and making them overlap in different colors and sizes. Seemed easy enough but wasn't sure how to do it without making the dye bleed and using only the materials I had on hand.
First I begged my husband to bring home some mylar sheets (acetate - mylar was a term we used in printing to differentiate between different materials) I used the mylar as a stencil and cut a tree design from it. Then I took setacolor dye and added it to aloe vera gel to make it more of a paste.




This was created using 3 different sized tree stencils.




I was trying to create visual distance and made the blue trees first.



The yellow trees were done with neopaque yellow and aloe vera gel. Then the reds were painted on top of them.



Here I used the trees cut out from the mylar (acetate) and I painted around the edges of the trees. After I had a few trees, I painted the background around them with the orange and aloe vera gel mixture. Gave me some ideas to noodle over. I think my next series of experiments will be on lightly colored backgrounds and then stenciling the trees.



Here is the start of an art piece. I am going to do a water lily and pads. I started by sketching the design out on white cotton fabric and using the neocolor watercolor crayons. I added water to blend the design and let it dry. I wanted the water to be darker, so I decided to add the setacolor and aloe vera gel mixture on top. Here is what it looks like halfway done. After they were all dry, I ironed to heat set. The water still wasn't dark enough, so I added another layer of the aloe vera gel and setacolor mixture. I also added more green to the leaves using this technique. I don't have a picture of it yet. I am going to use dye pens on the lily pads to bring out there designs. Once that is done, I will post another in progress picture.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

TIF February Final




I finished! And it was on the last day of February. I just didn't get a chance to post it until now.

I added drop shadows of the trees, outlined rocks, added more details to the frozen pond and some beads to represent leaves that just never fall off during the fall. I actually used a denim blue fabric for backing and border.
I am pretty please with the results!