Mixed Media Journal Cover

This is a journal cover that's in the works. It takes quite a lot of time to dry from the raw canvas stage. As soon as it's cured, I'll stitch the bottom & insert the journal. I'm leaving the edges frayed because I really like the grunge look.

 

Art Cloth ATC

This is another try at the Quilting Arts Magazine article on Art Cloth. The Surface Design Tribe had an open studio where we could work on whatever we wanted and see what everyone else was working on at the same time. I made a couple of pieces of art cloth but I must admit that once again...I was not happy with the results. So I brought my pieces home and stacked them with the others until I decide if I'm painting the whole damn thing a solid colour again. It's been a very busy few weeks for me and I haven't completed anything to post except a surface design block...that I forgot to take pictures of. So last night it's crunch time and I need an ATC (Artist Trading Card) for the Group of Eight exchange tonight. So I was rummaging through my stack with my little ATC frame and I really liked this little section of the cloth. So I cut it up, stitched the edges, covered it in Dorland's encaustic wax and added the pen nib. Appleman...my husband...would be proud.

 So this once again started with the article...piece number 4...and once again it looks nothing like the picture offered in the article....which is extremely frustrating to me. I started with canvas that I randomly painted blue & a brownish mix. Then I added the Japanese newspaper that I picked up in Hong Kong...so maybe it's Chinese...not sure. Then I added the stressed cheese cloth and painted the whole piece with watered down white glue. I added molding paste and painted it with a bronze Lumiere paint. Added a little bit of rusted orange Lumiere and put it aside because it looked like crap. I just love the texture but I just can't seem to get the colouring the way I want it. I like this little section and the pen nib added better interest than beads in this case...at least I thought so. So I guess I'm destined to try art cloth #5...I'll keep you posted. Oh and I should mention that one of the GOE (Group of Eight) members told me to keep a little rubbing alcohol in my studio to take some of the extra paint away...I still don't have the alcohol but I will definitely give it a try when I have some...just a thought.

Frankensteined

Well, I've been working for a week and getting nowhere. It started with an article from the Quilting Arts Magazine, February/March 2012 issue. The article is called Surfaces for Stitch in which this wonderful lady named Pauline Verrinder  gives directions on how to make art cloth from Gesso, cheesecloth & newspaper. I just loved this article and what she made was fabulous. The Group of Eight's (GOE), challenge for next quarter is to do something with an article in a newspaper. So naturally I though I had something that I could produce and be done my challenge way before the due date. Ha ha...that's not happening. I'm a very nervous person and always want to put my best effort on everything that I do and I was discussing this with the group and telling them how I really stress over the challenges. The group was very supportive and told me to just have fun and that I could make something as small as an ATC for submission. So I really thought I had this one in the bag. I started out so bloody positive but all I got was positively frustrated. I followed the directions but I guess I'm just not very intuitive when it comes to paints because you wouldn't believe how many layers I added to try and get the right combination. Then when all I got was a friggin mess...I'd paint over it with a solid colour in frustration. I couldn't get the layers to stay down like the article was describing. As soon as it dried the layers seemed loose...so out came the glue, more gesso or even molding paste was added. I ended up with nothing like the article. After my first try with nothing that resulted in anything like art cloth,  I asked my husband to read the article and see if I'm missing anything. He read the article and had a few suggestions. So on Friday night I came home again ready to adorn the apron and dig in again. I worked for over 3 hours and the next morning I went up to the studio and painted the whole dam thing metallic blue and started over. This article is going to do some traveling with me so that I can get some expert advice from my fibre friends. Maybe I'll have more to show but for now take a look at the below pictures. They are not in sequence so I've numbered them in the caption of where I started and what I ended up with.

This was my third piece that my husband says needs to be called "Frankenstein something" because of the stitching. The newspaper article is not recognizable at all. It was suduko puzzles and that's why they have numbers painted on the pieces.

This is a detailed shot. I think I'm going to frame this one anyways because it's growing on me a little. Maybe I just want to salvage something of my week.

This was my first try. Up close I really love the texture that I got...but it's nothing like the article. I wish I could show the article but I don't want to get in trouble with the copyright police.

This is the second one I did after my husband read the article and gave me his suggestions. We you can see some of the newspaper article in this one...but it just doesn't do anything for me at all. I even had the Golden glass bead medium out on this one. Up close you can see the beads and how they give it a little glitz. Again nothing like the original article from QA. You can see why I needed some help on it right. I was loosing sleep...and everything works in theory.

Out of the Bowels of the Unknown Basket

While I was cleaning up the studio after the last surface design submission, I found my sheet protector bits all over my desk. I just loved this long piece that wasn't painted but I didn't know what to do with it. So I gathered them all & put them all neat in a zipped baggie and dropped them into the unknown basket. This is where I keep every juicy little bit of want-a-Be's. I noticed a left over bit of tissue on canvas that had been painted with a rustic red and then it began. The sheet protector bit came out and was promptly painted metallic blue. I cut an ATC out of the tissue canvas and anchored the design with stitch for interest and finally a long awaited maiden try with the Angelina fibers for a backdrop. I was just chin wagging with a group of friends a few weeks ago about all this STUFF that we have in our studios that have never been used. We have to have them but they sit waiting for the day they will be honored. Well that's what was happening to my Angelina fibers. I have bags of the stuff. Not the little tiny bags that you buy now but the original large packages you could buy relatively cheap when it first came about. Now you just get what I call...teaser packs. Nothing you can do a grand amount of work with, just enough to have you needing to go back to the store. After the fiber, I mounted the sheet protector and scuffed it with some metallic gold off my finger.

Stitched to anchor the ATC

Added Angelina Fiber

Painted & melted sheet protector

Ferrero Cameo

The GOE group quarterly challenge this quarter was issued by myself. I wanted to do something that the group had never done, yet something that is growing in popularity, so I chose Steampunk. I haven't seen the submissions yet because the reveal is Wednesday night. So please visit the GOE site next week to see what everyone has submitted. This was quite the challenge for me. I had many ideas but it's very difficult to execute many of them. I have a book of antique posters and I remembered one in particular that I really liked and decided to do my fibre Steampunk rendition of Mucha's Bysantine head. The hair colour & curls remind me of my eldest daughter, so naturally I loved it from the beginning. I never thought that I would be doing it Steampunk style but I think it works.

Ferrero Cameo

 

I wanted the background to be a little mystical, so I chose a fabric that I purchased while on vacation with a good friend. My son gave me some of his bicycle gears. There was motorcycle chain collected from a business close by to my husbands work. The watch parts were in my stash and had been collected for quite some time. When I was close to being done I needed to think of how I would frame the piece. Once again, it was my son that suggested something like a cut foil frame. So that made me think of the Ferrero Rocher chocolate wrappers that were collected over Christmas. I tore them into pieces so that I would get an interesting reflection and glued them down to a panel that my husband had cut out for me.

I really like this piece and loved the process from start to finish.