Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Experimentation as Procrastination

Instead of, oh, say, finishing something, yesterday I did some found object printing. Fabric paint, since my earlier experiments with acrylic paint yielded acrylic paint crumbs in my sewing machine. Most objects failed, including styrofoam packing peanuts. Maybe if I had glued them onto a base...but that would have required planning ahead, so the glue could dry.

Successful objects include a Leinie's bottle:
Leinie's bottle print on fabric
There's usually one of these around somewhere. Very subtle markings, once I figured out how not to glob the paint onto the glass.

And a rotting onion half I found in the bottom of the fridge:
Onion prints on fabric
Very cool, although future onions will produce (hee!) slightly different patterns. The fabric smells slightly of onion; I will have to rinse it after I heat-set the paint (does that take a hyphen? "heat" modifies "set"....).

And now, if you are my mother, you want to know what I will do with these. As always, the answer is "store them somewhere until I think of something." Except the styrofoam packing peanut piece--that'll be a back or base of something, where it can never be seen by human eyes.