Art Dolls

Fiber Arts by Judi Wellnitz
Stone Cold Design

More baby stuff!

I'm having entirely too much fun dyeing these little baby onesies. I actually ordered a bunch more dyes so I can do more with pastels. I only have four basic Procion Fiber Reactive dyes and I've been mixing my own colors. Decided I don't like the tie dye design that you make using rubber bands, I much prefer the spiral. The three to the right are tie dyed and the other two are twisted and then vat dyed. There's quite a few babies due in my circle of friends so I can amuse myself for a while!

I'm also making a couple of plushies - this is from my infected plushie line :) Unfortunately I couldn't find a nice fuzzy felt in anything other than beige. I tried to dye some but it didn't take as it's a synthetic. Didn't think it would. Oh well. I don't want to buy any acid dye to try to see if that would work. So Measlie here is pretty pale.

Posted by judi at 4:57 PM | Comments (2)

Knitting Chart Holder

OMG, I am SO excited! I'm leaving for California tonight and I want to take my knitting but my chart holder weighs nearly a pound and it really makes my bag heavy. I decided to make my own version and this came out at half the weight - whoot! Plus mine is a million times prettier than the plain old black commercial one. I am going to make some revisions to it when I get home and then I'm going to release it as a pattern! Yay!

Closed - obviously, lol - this is some of the material I made at the Summer Arts Festival

Open :) - the chart side is magnetic - the other side has a pocket to hold your pattern

Standing up - the strap reverses to keep the holder standing open

Posted by judi at 12:59 PM | Comments (4)

Tomato tin to Paint Brush Holder

I ran out of space in my mesh pencil holder that I've been using for my brushes and had grabbed an empty tin from the kitchen to use for the overflow. U G L Y ... to say the least! So I finally got around to prettyfying it up and thought I'd share how ...

Step 1

Base coat your can with white gesso and then whatever color you like. I, obviously, used yellow craft paint. I left the paper on too as you can see, if I decide I don't like this later on maybe I can tear it off and change it! Don't worry about totally covering up any words that show through - this is only the first layer!

Step 2
Put a little bit of paint in a spray bottle (got these for $1 each in the travel section) and add a teensy bit of water. Spray and let it drip - doesn't this look luscious all by itself!

Step 3
Add some collage elements. I had some leftover strips of paper from when I made the bookmarks so I stuck them on plus a vellum saying I had sitting around. I didn't have vellum glue so I used my trusty Gel Medium. Didn't work so well on the vellum, it kind of crinkled but I like the look. See my trusty glue brush? I use cotton swabs for all types of things!

Step 4
Start adding more layers. I tend to overdo this technique to death ... sponge through some sequin waste. I did this in a couple of different colors.

Step 5
Adirondack Color Wash. I learned about this stuff from Suzi Blu's class and I've been using it on everything! It's very thin and dye like. I masked off the vellum because I didn't want the saying to disappear under paint. Painter's tape (the blue stuff) is low tack so it's pretty safe to use on projects. Spray a couple of colors on your can. See the sunflowers? Old plastic placemats that I was going to toss until I decided they would make great art mats - a couple of them made a great splash screen!

Step 6
Just keep adding layers until you are happy. I sponged on more paint and sprayed a bit more. I even added one of the little rhinestone flowers I got from a scrapbook section at WalMart. I sponged some Titan Buff on it to knock it back some. Just play until it looks right to you. I ended up with the messy 'painterly' look I was going for and I think my brushes are much happier living in their tomato can now!

Posted by judi at 4:04 PM | Comments (2)

Soft Rocks

Here's another of the things I made at class .. a soft rock. We made hard rocks and soft rocks. I am making another hard rock right now using a bit different process from what we did in class. Hopefully it will work out. If my teacher gives me permission I might teach this over at Doll Street to go along with a mermaid class that Judy Skeel will be teaching later this year. Although the rock will be altered from what you see here ...

Posted by judi at 3:57 PM | Comments (3)

More altered fabric

More pieces I made last week .. I have a LOT of these but I won't bore you to death with them. Here's another one made with the mesh without the masking tape grid ... kinda looks like city lights, eh? Plain blue cotton to start.

Then this one is pretty cool - we had a heavy piece of lace and I sprayed painted dye through it (it was plum dye) - then when it was dry I used Dye-na-flow and painted the piece. Basically it's the negative of the lace motif. Ruined it by outlining the flower with foiling. But still fun to do.

This piece I really love - it's another background made with the hardware mesh, but then the roses were screened over it with black transparent paint. I just wish these pieces were big enough to DO something with, lol.

Posted by judi at 6:34 PM | Comments (3)

Summer Arts Festival - week 1

It's been a crazy two weeks - been doing so much new/old stuff it made my head spin! The first week we did a whole lot of surface design. We made stamps and learned lots of different ways to change fabric. I found that I really liked using the thermofax screens - they were a lot of fun. Here's a couple of samples of what I made from some plain cotton fabric...

I had a roll of some type of mesh and it was only a couple of inches wide, so I taped it down in this grid pattern. Painted the grid and then laid the fabric face down and brayered over it. I did eventually get rid of the big lines of masking tape - didn't like them. But this was fun.

This piece started out with a background made on the hardware mesh, then I added more paint by sponging through some sequin waste, when that was dry I thermofax screened the dragonflies. I eventually foiled them too but didn't get a photo of that.

Last sample is a simple piece. I folded the fabric accordian style and ironed it, then painted the edges. When dry I stamped it. The stamps are all hand made - the big one is craft foam and the little one is a carved eraser.

This was basically a technique class - these bits are 8.5" x 11" to fit into a binder. I have lots of these :)

Posted by judi at 9:01 PM | Comments (4)