Discoveries…

I get plumb silly with myself when I make an exciting (to me anyway) discovery while I’m doing art. Remember this piece of paper cloth? It was the piece I did the tutorial on (see sidebar link).  I am finding this paper/cloth with metallic paint on it notoriously difficult to photograph.  It looks like blotches of paint when it really has a nice warm color all over it.

I decided to make a needle case today for a friend of mine out of this paper/cloth.  I layered it and quilted leaves and hearts on it.  As on the last one I made (see tutorial) I colored in the leaves with Tsukineko Fabrico marker #165 Pine.  The ink is transparent which is a wonderful asset because it doesn’t totally cover all those luscious designs on the papers below.  The heart quilting could barely be seen. Coloring them posed a greater challenge to me because the garnet and orange markers make a pretty solid look, which was not what I wanted. (To see what I mean, see the Tutorial–one of the needlecases has hearts that are painted with the marker and left to dry.) On a whim, I colored a heart with the Garnet #125  and Autumn Leaf #153, but instead of letting it dry, I smudged it with my finger…PERFECT!  I kept doing this to all of the hearts with both colors.  Results? A luscious look full of depth…and you can see the hearts but  they blend softly and don’t  stand out.  Something so simple…

I’m so pleased with how this turned out!

Another Sample…

I made another sample last night. I made this one to show one way to use Angelina film. It’s not terribly artsy, but I did put some creativity into it. Since I will also have Tsukineko’s Fabrico markers for sale, I used those on the sample too. Thanks to Gerrie Congdon’s advice I was able to photograph it without a lot of glare. (Thanks, Gerrie!) I think the Angelina film is interesting to work with. The background is gray hand dye cotton.

Now this morning I think I am going to get outside in this glorious weather and dye paint some more cloth!

The town-wide yard sales on Saturday netted me a very nice Scrabble game with a story for $1 and a Singer sewing machine for $1. (and it works too!) I was almost in heaven.