Stimulating ...A GOE Challenge

One of the members of the GOE group gave us a container with some odds & ends and a word for inspiration, for us to use in our challenge. I've been pondering for quite some time & finally I had to just have it done because today was the last day I had to work on it. No more messing around. I always seem to run out of time and pressure to finish seems to be my best friend lately.

The word in the box was Stimulating. So I just did something that I find stimulating...that's working in encaustic. I used a wipe up tissue that I kept from a day of dying at a friends house for the backdrop. The colour matched perfectly with the rovings that were in the box. I added Pearl X, beads, a crayon coloured bottle cap, a tyvek & copper bead, along with some felted trimmings my daughter gave me last Christmas.

This is just a detail shot.

Mr. Boston ATC

This ATC (Artist Trading Card) was made for the GOE monthly meeting exchange. I was playing around with a different colour for me. I really wanted it to be red but for some reason it looks more pink. I started off with card stock, overlaid with white & printed tissue. Then I added a Boston postage stamp that I had in my stash & worked water over the tissue until it framed the stamp the way I wanted. I then dry brushed some bronze Lumiere paint for accent & used some rubbing alcohol to remove some of the excess paint so that some of the printed tissue would show through. I put it aside at that point because I wasn't sure it was finished but didn't know what I could do to be more interesting. So the next night I added some random hand stitching and then it was finished. I really love the texture you can get with the tissue. I should know who the person on the stamp is...but sorry I don't...at least not at this point. Maybe someone will enlighten me.

ATC

If you've been following my blog you'd notice that I've been working on art cloth. I took this ATC sized section from one of my art cloth experiments, hand stitched it, added beads along with a tyvek bead and copper wire. I thought that the texture was interesting. I'm really starting to like working with the tissue and cheese cloth. This particular sample was done with alcohol inks that I spritzed with water so that it ran down the length of the paper. It was quite stiff when complete and perfect for an ATC.

Business Reply Mail

Yesterday I spent some time in the studio after a sleepless night dreaming of encaustic. I turned on the hot plate to heat while I started playing with some collected papers. I had just received my first issue of Cloth Paper Scissors the night before and read the article about Daniella Wolfe...an encaustic artist. Of course, what always falls out of the magazines but those business reply's for you to order more magazines. So I decided to collect them and that was the beginning of the collage. So here's to Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts Magazine.

Encaustic Wax, collected papers, Business Reply Mail cards from both Cloth Paper Scissors & Quilting Arts Magazine. Potato bag mesh, sequin waste, thread goo in assorted colours and some mosaic tiles.

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

Quilting Arts inspiration

Recently there was a free download from Quilting Arts, "Essential Embroidery Stitches" and section #4 was particularly interesting for me. Section #4 'Reverse Applique & Bobbin Embroidery with a twist' by Yvonne Brown. She uses tissue and cloth to get the most amazing texture as a backdrop to reverse applique. I didn't have all the supplies in order to do the applique but I knew I had the materials to do the background. I had an afternoon of play and created one sample and one piece that I'm still thinking of adding a little bit of red to...I'm still contemplating where to add the red...so it's possibly unfinished.

In the first sample I took canvas and painted both sides with simple, watered down white glue.
Then I added the white tissue paper and painted it down with more of the watered down glue. While it was still wet, I painted it with Lumiere Halo blue gold paint. According to the article I was supposed to let it dry for 24 hours...but I'm really impatient and wanted to take it that night to one of my quilting groups...so I put it in my food dehydrator and voila it was dry very quickly.



Sample #2 was started with canvas. I painted both sides with the watered down glue and then I inked it. Once the ink was desirable, I added dried flowers from my garden and seeds that were no longer germinating. Then the tissue layer was added, painted with the watered down glue. I then put it in the food dehydrator for it to dry. I didn't like the tissue being too white so I rubbed ink over the tissue where I thought it was too white. I then burnt the edges and painted Dorland's wax medium over the tissue. Dorland's is a wax, like encaustic, that can be used cold and then heated.