Needs orange

I spent a week diligently attempting to sketch beach sand from last weekend's outing (had the beach all to myself!) and then the fabric I sat down to paint yesterday looks nothing like it:



Fabric paint on hand-dyed fabric. Needs orange; haven't decided if the orange should be paint, thread, fabric, beads, sequins. Maybe more green, too. Learning I could use a liner brush with some competency was exciting.

Block Print Redux

Thought I'd try the PCB-inspired block I carved two years ago again (I don't know where the pictures from that post went...)

Acrylic paint:


Ugly hand-dyed fabric*:

*Maybe "ugly" isn't the right word. During my sorting, I separated hand-dyed fabric (some of it I did 9 years ago, good grief) into "interesting"--lots of pattern, more than one color that work together well, really good color--and "boring"--almost solid, unattractive or muddy colors, etc. I pulled both of these from the "boring" bucket.

Block prints on yellow:


Block prints on puke-color:


Acrylic paint on denim:

Commercial foam stamp. Was just trying to use up the extra paint--I like the muted effect of the paint on the denim. This particular scrap isn't very interesting, but it's good to know about the paint for later projects.

Fun with Tulle

I still hate tulle, but I like the look of teeny scraps captured under it. This stuff was all done last week:


I wish I would have bought more of this blue foil-dot net that I found when I was excavating my stash, because I can see lots of this in my future. This will be a background for something.


Coffee cuffs, from teeny scraps and tulle. The middle one has too much contrast, I think.

I have too much crap.

I haven't even gotten around to sorting the commercial cotton fabrics yet. I need more plastic containers.

And a better way to store the adhesives and paintbrushes.

¡Feliz Noche de Rábanos!

It is Night of the Radishes again already.

I've been sick and re-arranging all my "art supplies" so nothing new to post. I have to go to Iowa tomorrow or Thursday, but I have all next week off, so maybe I can start or finish something. Or at least write a big list of goals for 2009.

Merry Christmas!

Well, hrm.

On Flickr, Kimberly suggested some stitching. I thought, WTF, I can't make it worse. :P



I kind of don't hate it. But it's so white...except for the ambient cat hair, not visible in this photo.

Mettler Poly-Sheen, for those who keep track of such things.

Fail du Jour

Meet Chairman Bob:


He's been leering at me from my bathroom garbage can for some months.

I'm probably the last person on the planet to try last summer's trend of melting plastic bags to create...melted plastic. I had visions of Wahol-esque dozens of Chairman Bobs on a single sheet.

Found a tutorial that suggested using the "rayon" setting. First try with plain white. Ick:

It took about half an hour of increasing the heat all the way past "wool" before anything melted. Instead of being a smooth sheet like the various pictures around the web, it feels more like that crumply plastic with the sanitary lining the grocery store puts between the meat and the styrofoam tray. Blecch.

Multiple Bobs:

Looked OK before the fusing; afterwards--ick.

Line of Bobs:

Not as exciting as the image in my head. And the toner from the Unwanted Printout I was using to keep melted plastic off my iron transfered on to the piece. Bah.

Solo Bob:

From a distance he looks like I could use him, but there's visible cat hair in it. There was an incredible amount of static electricity generated by the bags, and the cat hair that gravitated toward the bags while they were in storage was impossible to remove, when I could even see it under three layers of plastic.

So much for Warhol Bobs. I'm not terribly distressed, since the whole project is probably a copyright violation. But I don't have any interest in jumping on the "repurposed" plastic bandwagon--it's too tacky.

Further experiments with PVA

Well, the Spider-Man cape was not as cool as the Talking Megatron from his cousins, but I've moved on.

I rescued some pages of memory dumps from the Unwanted Printout Pile at work on Friday. I have about three reams of Unwanted Printouts, but very little of it is this interesting. Maybe I should have used the boring stuff to experiment...

They make fairly boring paper fabric:












After cutting out some bits and realizing they were quite fun except for the black-on-white, color experiments.

Watercolor pencils brushed with water before PVA:






Watercolor pencils smeared only by watered-down PVA:

















No pencil, only a single drop of fluid acrylic mixed with the PVA:














I probably could have used two or three drops.

Quality Control

As expected, the first superhero cape was too successful and we are now making a Spider-Man cape--yes, I know Spider-Man does not wear a cape--for the nephew I shall call "Huey" (Dewey and Louie are still too young to know they want one).

Also over the weekend I found a whole box of fabric I'd forgotten about, including a couple of half-yard pieces printed with sushi. I also found a four-patch quilt that was all done except binding--about four years old, someone asked me to make one for her toddler and never gave me any money (next time, up front).

I'm out of ideas again. Unless someone tells me this is an unspeakably evil thing to do, I'm thinking I'll put a binding on the toddler quilt and give it to a friend who is expecting. The quilt has dogs, the family has dogs, the baby won't need a cape for a couple of years...

Socialist Realism

Gazing toward the bright future of the pastureland...



This is Antoinette, in Plymouth, just off SR 67.