Funky face series

Made another one of my funky face cards. I really enjoy these except they make a huge mess. Lots of tiny little pieces floating everywhere and they are hard to corral to use or throw away. As usual with art - sometimes the first piece just doesn't work out - so I might make a few eyes or lips. Then I also have all the tiny pieces of backing paper to contend with. Luckily Zach doesn't come in the studio anymore so I don't have to worry about him eating the pieces that fall to the floor! I have the card up for sale on eBay if you're interested.

Hand Carved Stamps

Remember I said that I had made some hand carved stamps? They are pretty primitive looking because I tried to get rid of the negative space around the design. These are pretty easy to do and you can make much cleaner stamps if all you do is carve out your lines and leave the background. I made some like that at our doll club meeting this past Monday. If you want to try this yourself just get a Speedball Linoleum Cutter kit (I don't think they are really expensive) and a couple of erasers or the linoleum specially made for carving. The erasers are good for practice but they can crumble around the edges of your lines. Then draw your design - remember that the image will be mirrored when you stamp it on something. Also be aware of the positive/negative aspects of your design - for instance if you are going to stamp in black on a white paper - do you want your image to be white on a black background (carve only the lines of the design) or black on a white background (carve around the lines - take out all of the background). That's how I did these stamps - carved out the background and left the design raised.

You can make all sorts of stamps and use them with fabric paints to make unique fabric for your dolls. You could make a border for a dress or just stamp right on the body itself. Lots of uses for these. Plus it's just plain fun.

21 Fabric Postcards

I decided that I needed to get all of my swaps out of the way so I can concentrate on dolls for a while. One of the swaps I am involved in is a postcard one - it's the second round of my Posta L'arte fabric postcard group. I made these over the course of two days, which is pretty good for me as I tend to get distracted really easily.

I used the leftover pieces from my daughter's quilt for most of them and I fused, fused, fused. I took strips of fabrics that looked great together and ironed them next to each other on Wonder-Under double sided fusible web. That gave me good background pieces - then I took a bright tropical piece that had big flowers on it and fused that to some WU. Cut out some flowers and fused them down on top on the background pieces. Did some free motion embroidery over the top of everything and .. voila .. done. On some of the others I took leftover pieces that had been strip pieced and used that for the background - then I just fused some contrasting material on top and free motioned over that. The final pieces that you see on the far right .. well, those are a BIG cheat! About a year ago I started a project from the Cloth,Paper, Scissors magazine - but never finished it. It's a big piece of felt with strips of material fused down (also strips of dictionary definitions - paper) and it has tons of stitching on top. I just cut it up into postcard sized pieces and .. ah ha .. ready made cards. Oh, I'm bad! But, hey, it got the job done and done fast!

Click to enlarge

First Needlepunch Experiment

I bought one of those new needlepunch attachments for my Bernina a couple of weeks ago. Just got around to trying it out last night. I can see a lot of possibilities for this tool.

In case you don't know what it is - it's a foot that goes on the sewing machine that has five barbed needles. You don't use thread and you have to take out the bobbin and bobbin race to make room for all those needles to go down through the needle plate. It basically causes your roving/wool/embellishments to bond with the base material by intermingling the fibers. So I used a piece of black wool as my background, some roving and fancy yarns and laid them out to make a flower. It was easier than I thought. Although when I decided to try it with a piece of Timtex behind the wool I nearly immediately broke a needle. Darn. One thing I did figure out pretty quickly is to tack the yarns in place before you starting running back and forth to punch them down. It's hard to keep a shape unless you do that. Also figured out that I have to buy a stiletto tool to guide the woolies so I don't punch five barbs through my fingers!

In case you're wondering why I'm not posting much - we're doing some house renovations and it's not leaving a lot of time to play right now.

I'm experimenting again!

My daughter is staying with me now that she's out of the hospital and that has actually given me time to do some projects. Today I got inspired by some papers and images that I received from Heather yesterday. In the package she sent me were two Paris decos - one for me and one for her. You don't work in your own deco but you do in your partners. So this is what I did in hers.

Then I decided to try printing on a piece of sheer organza fabric. I cut a large piece and taped it down with low-tack painter's tape on a piece of cardstock. Ran it through my ink-jet printer hoping all the while that it wouldn't get stuck. Luck was with me and it ran right through. Now this is cool - it makes kind of a ghost image on the fabric and also leaves a decent print on the cardstock. How the image looks will also depend on what fabric you put it on top of when you use it. I chose an orange/yellow batik. You can see the rest of what I did ... a couple of columns of another batik, free motion embroidery clef symbol, then I burned the organza around the symbol in a quasi sheet music design. This goes off to Australia next week. Hmmm .. I think I have some sheet music fabric .. bet this image would look neat on that. Might have to try this again!

Click on image to enlarge

It feels good to be back in the studio!

ATCs .. again

Just when I think I have enough fabric Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) on hand something comes up so I need more. I have six on hand now .. including the three I made today .. but I just realized that I need one or two more, sigh. I have a private swap I'm doing with a gal in Australia, and to make it worth the postage we are going to swap 2 fabric and 2 paper ATCs. So it will be back to the salt mines!

Here's the three I made today. I'm totally nuts for that gold mesh, although I'm not sure I understand why! After making two of the vintage photo cards I figured I'd better do something different. So I dipped into my stash of little triangles and patched them all together. If you recall, I went 'trashcan diving' at the quilt store one day and now I have a couple of hundred batik triangles to use up.

The metal tag says "The Sweetest Thing' and the washer says "Friendship".

Starter fabric book

After nearly a week when there was so much 'stuff' to do that I didn't get to play in my studio today was for me! It felt so good to be able to get back in there and make something. Still trying to get caught up on presents and swaps though. Today I made a starter fabric book for my friend Heather. I seem to be making quite a bit for her lately. She sends me boxes and boxes of supplies for paper art and, since she doesn't sew a lot, I make her the things she'd like to make for herself but can't at the moment.

She had mentioned that she'd like to make a fabric book .. so ... I made her one that she can embellish. Each page is 6"x6". These are so simple to make - cut your fabric 1/2 inch larger than the finished size - sew the fabric right sides together with a layer of batting on the bottom (use 1/4 inch seams). Leave an opening to turn it right side out. Flip it - sew the opening closed, and then topstitch. Sew the layers togther with a seam down the middle. There are two layers -which equals out to 8 pages to work on. All the inside pages are batiks with nothing on them so she can do whatever her little heart desires. I dyed some dimensional trim to match and added a vintage photo to the cover just to give her a head start. It was hard to stop at just two embellishments - guess I'll have to make myself one of these next!

Alcohol Inks

I finally got some alcohol inks to play thanks to my friend Heather. She spoils me! I have to be careful when I talk about wanting to try something because the next thing I know it will be in my mailbox! Yesterday Kelli, one of the artists in the Embellished Circus, did some awesome work with alcohol inks and she inspired me to give it a go today.

I made a bunch of ATC blanks but I can't figure out how to photograph them, way too much reflection. I tried like three times and finally gave up. So instead I'll share the medallion I made and a domino. The medallion was based on one that was taught in Maggie Grey's Workshop on the Web - this is a great quarterly workshop with articles and lessons by some of the world's best textile artists. It costs $25 a year but I think it's worth it. I used the alcohol ink on gold foil after I sewed the design on it. There is a second piece of gold foil in the center with a bead under it (the nipple looking thing). The second piece is held in place by some free motion embroidery lace. Colors aren't the best but it was more of a practice piece than anything else. I'll make more of these - this was FUN!

Here's a domino. I have to go back around it with the gold metallic pen. Didn't see it wasn't even until I took the photo.

Now I just have to DO SOMETHING with them. Soon, soon...

I'm having too much fun!

Moving right along with these ATCs .. got another two done today. I've finally smartened up and actually lay the whole thing out before I start cutting, fusing, and sewing. Before I just kind of built it as I went along. I like this way better. I'm happy with these latest two too.

I have a couple of pieces of Asian themed fabric that I've been dying to do something with. I like using images on my ATCs and I had a great one of Japanese ladies that I got my from Dover sampler. So I took my last page of Printed Treasures fabric and printed a whole page of various images that I could use on ATCs. The hand on the Printed Treasures is really nice and soft - too bad it's SO expensive! Anyhow - still playing with mesh - but this time I used some of mine - I used a red piece layered with silver to tone it down - worked well.

Pretty much did the same thing with this one - framed a picture. Made a crazy quilted background out of various black/whites - I have a huge collection of them and have wanted to do something with those for a long time too! That's Greta Garbo, in case you're wondering. Lots of silver, silver gimp, silver mesh, silver studs. I even tried to put silver piping on the edge but it didn't work out too great.

That's it for today! Tonight will be movies and popcorn .. hubby brought home three to watch! Typical guy movies too - action, action, and more action!

Procrastination - my middle name!

I'm hosting an Artist Trading Card (ATC) swap for one of my online groups and I've got about 75 gorgeous pieces of art here now. But talk about last minute .. I haven't made my own ATCs yet and they are going to be swapped out and put in the mail on Tuesday. So that's what I've been working on today.

When I signed up to be a charter subscriber to Quilting Arts' new magazine, "Cloth, Paper, Scissors', I got a little gift certificate to spend in their store. So I bought some vintage images that were printed on fabric. I've been using them sparingly but I pulled them out to use tonight.

This one has a sheet music background, two pieces of interesting material that I frayed, and a printed ribbon. I also used a piece of gold mesh that I got from someone -it's awesome stuff and I want to get some more. I'll have to find out where she got it.

For this one I used the gold mesh again, a very neat shiny material that I got in the mail from another friend, some black and gold ribbon, and some iron on gold jewels. I don't have one of those special applicators, I just use the tip of my Clover mini-iron. It works great as long as I'm careful! Oh, I don't keep my heat gun anywhere near the mini-iron anymore - so no chance of explosions!

Last of the postcards

I really hate it when things I 'have to do' interfere with the things I 'want to do'. For instance I really need to finish the last few postcards for my swap - they are due to be mailed by Sep 14th but instead I've spent the last couple of days dealing with the hard work created by my husband's hunting passion. Yes, he got a moose on Saturday, thankfully my girls and a couple of their friends came over and helped with the butchering. So today I finally got back into the studio to play with fabric.

I made two of these postcards today. I like the design concept but I'm going to work on the colors and contrasts. I used a stamp for the face and drew in the suggestion of a jaw line. Used some colored pencils to soften the stark white of the muslin I stamped on - next time I'll use something else. Dug into my scrap bag of triangles - which I still have a couple hundred of - and just used some other geometric shapes. I think I'll work on this design and make some of these for the breast cancer fundraiser that is supposed to happen at the Houston Quilt Festival. It actually looks better in person, LOL.

Puff it up!

I figured out why my postcard didn't puff up like I thought it would when I heated the craft foam - my stitching was too dense. I made another sample yesterday and did some really big stippling stitches - it puffed great! The sample was big enough to cut down for two postcards but then I had the problem of 'what do you put on top of a bunch of puffy fabric'? On one I put an applique I have had for about 5 years and the other got a leftover piece of the sample put on top (cut much smaller) and a little heart applique that I fussy cut from another piece of fabric. Didn't take photos - they're not that great - they are nice - but not great.

Oh - I bought some watercolor-paper postcards to try as a backing for the postcards instead of fabric. I'll have to dig out one of my old needles to use so I don't ruin the one I'm using on the machine now. I've been reading that a lot of people do this and it will be SO much eaiser to write on than fabric!

Not much else going on - today I cleaned house instead of play in my studio. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

Melting - my new hobby

Made a couple more pin dolls - I have to get three done and in the mail this week for the swap on FOCD. I did some multi-media work on them so I was using my heat gun and my mini-iron. The two of them tried to set my studio on fire today. When I wasn't looking the cord from the heat gun draped itself over the hot barrel of the iron. The vinyl cord melted all the way through and when the wires hit the hot metal - KAPOW! There was a huge boom and then fireworks. The two of them sent sparks flying! I nearly had a heart attack. Luckily the pins were done except for their backs. Phew. Here they are ...

I like the green one best - so does Kai. They both started life as a piece of ecology cloth - which is an unbleached rough muslin. I stamped the face with Staz-on ink and then colored it with watercolor pencils. I colored the bodies that way too - just wet the whole thing down and then blended different colors together. When that dried I cut some pieces of stitch witchery into thin strips and, using the heat gun, melted it to the fabric just enough to stick. Poured embossing powder on it, shook off the excess, and then melted it all. Makes some great texture. After that I just added various papers to the two of them. These were pretty quick - which was pretty cool!

Click to enlarge

So .. hubby fixed the heat gun for me by cutting the cord down and resplicing it together. The mini iron has holes in the barrel and it's pretty much full of melted vinyl. Not sure if I can use that again or not. Grrr. So let this be a lesson to you ... don't turn your back on your tools - they're sneaky! Keep your tools out of trouble!

This is really strange ...

In the back of my mind I have been thinking about that self-portrait challenge that Quilting Arts is having. The examples in the magazine showed fabric collaged faces. So I thought I'd try one.

It might have been a bit smarter to try it in a larger size than 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches though. In case you don't know - that's the size of an Artist Trading Card. I started by fusing a dark blue background to a piece of Timtex. Then I fused Wonder-Under to a bunch of different fabrics and just cut out the pieces in the shapes I needed. Using my tiny Clover iron made fusing the pieces to the face way easier than trying to use a standard iron. I actually fused all the facial features to the skin piece before I put the entire face on to the background. Manipulating those tiny pieces of fabric was a pain in the butt though. Tweezers worked great to place everything where I wanted it. Yep, some pieces were THAT small! Then I made the mistake of trying to make the lips smaller AFTER I fused the piece down. Not wise. I pulled up one side and got it trimmed a bit but the other side didn't want to budge - so now she has these lopsided collagen lips. I added a touch of white paint on the eyes and used black pen to separate the lips but the rest is all fabric. It was a really different thing for me to try. Probably would have been easier if it was larger. But I kind of like it. Still need to do some free motion stitching on it to make sure the pieces don't lift but it's basically done. Weird, huh???

Round Robin Journal

Well, I didn't get any arty stuff done while I was camping. Nothing new. My friend didn't show up till 7:30 pm then we had dinner and after that it was just too late to pull everything out. So today I worked on one of the projects I wanted to do while I was out there. It's a journal for a round robin doll I'm doing - a Flat Stanley kind of thing.

I had bought a journal for $1.00 at Michaels, it had a blue polka dot cover with a little transparent window. Behind the window was this:

Way too cutesie for me! I forgot to take a photo of the cover before I started, but you get the idea. So I ripped the paper off the inside of the cover and removed the gardening illustration. I glued a vintage photo of a Parisian showgirl on some cardstock and made that the new window. Then I used a sponge and stamped the cover with a Distress Ink in brown. While that was still wet I laid down a coating of Golden's Gel Medium on the cover and pressed violet tissue paper over it. The gel medium acts like a glue. The ink blended with the gel medium and bled through the tissue paper. Very cool effect. When it was dry I sponged some pink dye ink over it. Finally I used a Krylon gold paint pen to outline the edges of the window and the edges of the cover. I did the tissue paper/ink thing to both sides of the cover - and the back cover too.


Click on image to enlarge

I like it. Now I just I have to figure out what to write in it!

Felting

Happy Tax Day! This past Monday at doll club one of the gals gave a demo on wool felting. We took wool roving and using soap mixtures, window screen, and non-slip rubber matting created a cool looking piece of fabric. Here's mine.

Click on image to enlarge

Mine didn't get the wool fibers as compacted as it should but it's still usable. When I pull on it the fibers don't separate. This was a lot of fun and it was fairly easy to do. Didn't take long either. I think it took about half an hour to make this piece. My fingers looked like prunes when I was done though because it's a very tactile process. There's an article on how to do this in a recent Quilting Arts Magazine. The current issue has an article on how to embellish your felted piece of wool.

What we did was take the pieces of wool roving and separate it into long thin pieces. Then we put two layers of the roving down horizontally and another two layers of the wool roving vertically. Wet it with a 'wetting agent' that was a mix of pure soap and water. Then using the ends of your fingers you patted the water into the roving. After that we put the piece of window screen on top and put a thicker soap solution on top, and using the pads of our fingers made circles until little bits of roving showed through. Then we changed the direction of the piece and rubbed some more. By now it was supposed to be fairly compacted. Then we took the piece of rubber matting and rolled the piece up in it - did this a bunch of times - you change the direction of how the piece is laying inside it so it gets rolled in all directions. Hard to explain. Then we rinsed all the soap out - and you have a strong piece of fabric to play with!

I'll make a postcard with mine. I'll do this again as soon as I get some roving. Of course soon I'll need another room to store all this stuff in!

The mermaid is done!

Well, she's done! Now I have to figure out what to do with her. This was the mermaid that I talked about earlier. The project from Margaret Ball's Embeadery book. Glad she's done so I can take her to doll club for show and tell tomorrow night.

Four of us made these mermaids. We're not sure what to do with them now. None of us wanted to make a necklace to hang her on as is shown in Margaret's book. Susan thought she'd make a great fridge magnet but I think not. I'll probably see about putting a pin back on her. I'm not big on wearing pins though - so she will probably be pinned to my design wall. My design wall doesn't have room for any designing anymore - it's covered with pin dolls, practice faces, and random other pieces of fabric art. I do have 4 quilt blocks that have been up there for a year. They were part of a mystery quilt by elinor peace bailey. Full of fairies and other fun things. One day I might finish it - but if not I might just finish the quilt blocks separately and give them to my nieces as gifts. It's a thought. What this has to do with the mermaid I have no idea.

Click on image to enlarge

Two for the price of one

Okay, so there's not going to be a picture today. I really like to try to put them up because I love looking at photos of other people's work, so I figure you do too. But I don't think today's experiment would photograph at all. Too reflective. What was it you ask? A couple of days ago I tried my hand at making a little quilt top using Ricky Tims' book Convergence Quilts. Guess it's been a while since I quilted and it showed. Of course using scraps that I had no clue which grain was which probably didn't help. Anyhow, I cut the top into 3 postcards (told you it was a little quilt top) and then did some silhouette type applique work on them. Liked two of them, didn't care for one. So I took the one I didn't like and covered it with this pink color-changing cellophane, you know, the stuff you get to wrap around baskets and gifts. Then I free motion embroidered on top of it to hold it in place, zapped it with my heat gun, and waited for the magic. Magic didn't happen - it didn't melt. It did tighten up some around the stitching though. Maybe cellophane doesn't melt or maybe my heat gun doesn't get hot enough. Dunno. What I do have now though is a card that looks totally different depending on how you hold it up to the light - kind of holographic. Tilt it one way and you see the cellophane and the stitching, tilt it another and you can see the work beneath it. Very cool! See - there's never mistakes, only opportunities!

Beading takes too long!!

The Dragon Ladies are working on a beaded mermaid, a project out of the new book by Margaret Ball, Embeadery. This is the third Sunday we've worked on this and we're still not done. We must be really slow! Actually none of us are beaders but we're having fun with this. The book is easy to follow and I can see a lot of uses for some of the stitches. Her book, in case you don't know, translates traditional embroidery stitches into beadery stitches. I have noticed that we do chat more when we're beading than when we're working on dolls. I would think it would take more concentration to bead than sew. Kind of surprising. This isn't a stuffed figure - it's flat. I still have half the doll to edge stitch, which I'm doing in a modified picot wrap type thing, and dangles still need to be made for her arms. Then if we decide to make the mermaids into necklaces we'll need to make one of those. At least we don't have to worry about starting a new project soon!

Click on image to enlarge

Postcard Frenzy!

Okay - these postcards are taking over. It's pushed my doll making to the back burner right now but I'm sure it will have an impact there in the future. Yep, keep telling yourself that Jude! I bought ANOTHER book today ... actually I bought two, but I only tried sewing a project out of one of them. Tonight's experiment was with Threadplay by Libby Lehman. She does this cool free motion embroidery ribbon stuff - it's awesomely pretty. The technique is pretty simple but I can tell it's going to take practice. My free motion embroidery is getting better but I've got a long ways to go. I chose a black background so I could see what I was doing, the pictures in the book are on quilted pieces and it looks much nicer. So for this piece I sewed the outline in a purple metallic, which was pretty easy, and then filled it in with an variegated orange-yellow trilobal polyester thread. It was a 30 weight and it was a poor choice. Too thick. I used a size 16 needle and lowered my tension but it kept shredding and now I have nests on the back big enough for something to live in! Thank goodness the backing goes on last, no one but me will know it's there. Okay - so you know too, sshh, don't tell. Then for the highlighting I used one of my embroidery rayons, much lighter, and I didn't have any problems. Used the same weight for the blues and it worked fine. Stuck a couple of buttons on it to balance out the little blue ovals and called it a night. So here it is ... it's supposed to be a ribbon even though it looks kind of like an amoeba .

Click on image to enlarge