Trees Revisited

When I did my tree series, it did not match the idea in my head. My results were very disappointing. So I put them off to the side for a while and worked on one of the many other projects I have in the hopper. Inspiration seems to strike me at the craziest times. This time came as I was falling asleep. I thought about adding color to the backgrounds!! Well I did do that and was still not happy. The next night as I was falling asleep, I thought what about black trees? Black would make the pieces pop. So off I went to create black trees over the colored tree fabric. I have to say, I am much happier!! I used black textile paint and aloe vera gel to create a paste.





Of course we always have stuff left over and I hate to waste good paint so I started a few more using black paint first! I also dug out a commercial stencil to try out some different ideas. I will play with them today and post later.

Like Mother, like Daughter . . .

My daughter loves to create. She is an artist but completely opposite of me. I love detail and my projects take so long to complete. Madelyn gets an idea and starts collecting all the items she needs to put it all together. She really is going to be quite the mixed media artist!! I have to share her latest creation because it is so darned cool!!

For a little background, it all started from a couple of marbles that my next door neighbor Mary gave her. She ran into the house all excited and started rummaging around for her "supplies." I gave her a couple of cabinets in the kitchen and loaded it up with all kinds of art stuff so she can create when the mood strikes. This was in reaction to the numerous scribbles on walls and floor.



So I sat back and watched her go. First she cut strips of different colors of construction paper and then glued them together. Next came the plate (leftover from Halloween obviously). She found a plastic spoon and glued that on and colored it with a red marker in the spoon part. Then she glued the marbles onto the plate. When she was done, she just ran off to play leaving her masterpiece behind. I was amazed! The cobweb looked like spaghetti noodles! How clever was that??

I have to find the "turkey" she made from moon shoes, empty envelopes and her blanket and the dollhouse she had to have (even though she doesn't play with dolls!) I walked by to find the dolls hanging upside down, by their feet!! from the roof of the house - kind of like bats!! She never ceases to surprise me!!

Progress Report

Sorry I have been a little late in publishing. I wanted to show you an update on an experimental piece I have been working on. I took a picture of a water lily surrounded by leaves and was thinking to myself "how can I recreate that in fabric and paints."
First I sketched out the design with watercolor crayons and then blended with water. They dried back way too light. So I decided to mix aloe vera gel in with setacolor dyes and paint into the leaves and the water. I loved the look!





My next step was to use colored pencils to recreate the plant life growing underneath and shiva paintstiks to add more shine to the water. I added more detail and depth to the leaves by using ink and colored pencils. Then I added round, flat beads in various shades of brown, green and yellow to create the plants growing around the lily. I hand quilted the leaves to add more dimension and shiva paintstiks in yellow and green metallic to create more shine. The lily was created using moleskin fabric on one side and a simple white cotton on the other. I made two sets larger and two sets smaller. After turning them inside out, they created this puffy, almost realistic looking lily! I just love happy accidents. I am now investigating ideas for the center of the lily. I will post progress on that later.



This is my piece for the going green challenge. We need to create a 4" x 6" postcard from only materials we had on hand. My card is made from fabric scraps from another piece. After trimming the piece to size, I realized that they would make a nice little postcard. The colors were so wonderful. I started laying the fabric strips together until I found a composition I liked. The "brown fencing" is actually from my potato bag. I want to add more thread painting to create tall grasses but alas, my sewing machine decided to stop working. Cleaned it all out, put it back together and now the bobbin casing will not stay where it is supposed to! I will have to borrow a machine to finish or do it by hand. Bummer.

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.

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!

TIF February

For the Take It Further Challenge, I decided to go with the colors this month. I had been experimenting with paper fabric and making collages. I found this one and decided to use it as the start off point for my TIF piece for February.
First I took a piece of fabric and then layered white tissue paper using a watered down glue and layering. Also added colored tissue papers. Once dry, I went in with various colors of blue paint and let that dry.



Then I gathered various threads in the colors for the challenge and started accenting parts of the picture to pull out the details.





I am pretty excited about the direction this piece is going. I am also trying to work on my Voice quilt for a juried show which is due on March 15th so not sure if I will finish this in time to post at the end of the month but I will give it the old college try!