Painted Batting Postcards

I am hosting the Montly Art Technique on Art Techniques group. Basically, you just paint or dye scrap batting. You can see some samples on previous posts. I have used diluted acrylic paints, and also left over Procion fiber reactive dyes that I use for hand dyeing fabric. I think you could use just about anything--I am wanting to try it with liquid watercolors too. I am hosting 2 swaps: one for 3/3 finished postcards measuring 4 x 6 inches, that include some painted batting. I am also offering a swap for 5/5 squares of painted batting measuring 6 x 6 inches. You don't have to make a finished project for those, just trading the battings. So, I am looking forward to seeing what people come up with. Here are a couple of the postcards I was playing around with.

Take it Further Challenge--March

Well, I got the top done for the Take it Further Challenge for March. Yes, the edges are supposed to be wavy and crooked! It is called "After Dark" because of the black fabric representing night, and also because I usually work on my quilting/ art between 11pm-12am.
I am trying to decide if I will do a traditional binding, or if I should "birth" the quilt to keep the wavy edge and not show a binding. I really hate birthing, and wouldn't be able to quilt it on my longarm machine if I did it that way, so I'm leaning toward a traditional binding. Hope to quilt it soon. Confession: do you know that I have about 40 quilt tops that need to be quilted? I am trying to quilt one per month, but at that rate it will take years to get through them all, and not including making more. So, I hope to keep my momentum on this project and see it finished soon.

Bead on a Wire Week 9

These are last week's projects: The easy link necklace (boy there were a bunch of links to make!), and the twisted jump ring bracelet. I loved making the bracelet, will probably make more. Not so sure about the necklace however.

Mixed Media Explorations Workshop Week 4

This is the last workshop that I am posting for the Artist's Circle for now. I will hopefully do another set later this Summer. These are the painted Pellon with stamping. I did mine with Golden Acrylic Gold paint and a foam stamp instead of pigment ink and a rubber stamp to get a bolder image. What am I going to do with them? I don't know, but they are sure fun to make! Maybe ATCs, postcards, inchies....

Take it Further Challenge #3 in progress

This is my fabric palate for the March Take it Further Challenge. After I pulled the fabrics, they reminded me of some of the Nancy Crow strata style quilts that I love. So, I got started with some of the elements, and was playing with the layout here.

Bead on a Wire Week 8

These are pics of the Artsy Choker and Twisted Jump Ring bracelet that I made for the A.R.T. workshop. The choker is copper wire, bone and glass beads, and the bracelet is copper and black copper wire with black glass beads. I really liked making the choker--I think that I will do more. There is another way to make them with a long second wire around the back of the neck that I think might hang a little better, so I'll have to give it a try.

Recycled Charms

These are some charms I made for a swap on the Latest Trends in Mixed Media group that I co-moderate. I made recycled Tyvek caged beads. They were fun to make: I painted a used Tyvek envelope with Pearl Ex powders mixed in with Lumiere paint. Cut them into long triangluar strips, wrapped around a bamboo skewer, and glued. Then I melted them with my heat gun--I learned to take them off the skewer first, because I melted my first set permanently to the skewer--Duh! Then, I wrapped them with silver colored copper wire, put an eye-pin through, added a jump ring, and Voila! Charms!

Mixed Media Explorations Workshop Week 3

This week we are doing Embedding and Sandwiching. You can do it with Wonder Under fusible web, or by sewing the embellishments between layers of tulle, organza or other sheer fabric. Beryl uses a painted Pellon interfacing as the base, but you could also use regular fabric or even paper. These are my samples from the start of painting the Pellon, cutting it to a 6 x 18 inch strip, laying on bits of threads and yarns, fuse the Wonder Under, add small squares of organza and paper punched flower shapes, and topped off with a layer of glitter tulle. Whew! You can even add more layers of Wonder Under and repeat the process, but I didn't want to cover up my background too much. I cut the Pellon down to 4 x 6 postcards and inchies, so that I can use them as bases, and add something else to them later. There are a lot of variations on this method, and so many different looks--I am anxious to play around with this a little more. And here is a snowflake postcard that I did last year by sewing the embellishments in, instead of fusing them.

Bead on a Wire Week 7

These are the projects that I made for the BOW workshop last week. I still don't like making the coil wrapped beads--I'm not quite sure why--mine just don't turn out as nice. But I do like the caged beads. So I made a blue glass caged bead bracelet and several pairs of Shepherd Hook earrings. The Shepherd hooks were made from a 2-inch length of wire, and they are a nice long hook that won't fall out as the fish hooks sometimes do. I used a pair of the coil wrapped beads for the earrings instead of the bracelet. These were some of the new glass beads that I got a couple of weeks ago, since I don't have a lot of large beads, and they seem to be working out pretty well for these projects. I have blues, greens and reds. I am starting a green bead with copper wire project for this week.

What Color Nailpolish Are You?

Your Nail Polish Color is Purple

How you're unique: You are artistic and expressive Why your style rocks: You pay special attention to color and fabrics What this color says about you: "I'm creative and know how to take care of myself"

What Color Nail Polish Best Fits You?

I thought this was pretty funny since my favorite color is Purple, and you know how I love color and fabric!

Mixed Media Explorations Workshop Week 2

So this week on the Artist's Circle, we are doing the air dry clay embellishments with Crayola's Model Magic(TM). These are so much fun. I had been dabbling a little bit with polymer clay embellishments, but the Model Magic is so much easier to work with and color, and I worry with the polymer clay about the toxicity. These are the first batch. I think that I will paint the next batch differently. On these I did watercolor, then Lumiere with Pearl Ex powders mixed in, then Rub-n-Buff gold on top. I think that I could skip the Lumiere.

I have to hide my Model Magic from my 5-year old daughter. She saw the package on the table, and got all excited to "do clay". I told her that this was Mommy's special art clay, and that she could use her Play Doh. She said, "that's for kids--it says Crayola on it!" Busted. Oh she is too smart for her own good. So now I have to hide the package, and do it at night after she goes to bed.

Bead on a Wire Week 6

This week we did the bangle bracelet and the classic fibula. I like my bangle bracelet. It was fun to make the coils and the clasp. I am still keeping an eye out for large beads--that seems to be where my stash comes up short. The fibula was a little tricky. I used 16 gauge nickel silver that was so stiff, it was hard to shape. And then the problem with finding large beads. But, I did it, and now onto the next assignments.....

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Last night I posted a pic of the paper quilt that I had made for the Quilting Arts/ Cloth Paper Scissors "True Colors" challenge. They had let people know last Friday if they had gotten in to the magazine. I hadn't heard, so figured it hadn't made the cut, and posted the pics on my blog. Well, this morning, I get an e-mail that it was accepted for the exhibit at Chicago International Quilt Festival! So...I pulled the pics off my blog until they are done with it. I would like to persue a series of paper quilts--I really enjoyed making this one, so I can post some of the paper quilt "offspring" pictures here in the future. People left some really kind comments about the quilt, so I hated to delete them, but I kept them in my e-mail and they are very much appreciated!

New Workshop

I am hosting a workshop on one of the groups that I moderate: The Artist's Circle. We are trying 4 techniques over the next 4 weeks from Beryl Taylor's book, "Mixed Media Explorations". This is a fabulous book, packed with techniques, and a luscious gallery. The first exercise is Water Soluble Fabric. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, so here was my excuse. These pieces are about 4 x 6 inches--postcard size--if that's what I choose to do with them. I layed them out on this cool multi-colored fabric for the picture to give it a more finished presentation, but I haven't decided if I will permanently sew it to this fabric or not. Head on over to the Artist's Circle group and join me! Next week: air dry clay embellishments!