Something New

After yesterday’s rant about creativity, I spent a lovely morning with my friend Anita H. and had a wonderful time talking about (and showing off) our various projects. I always come away from my visits with her with LOTS of new ideas to try.

I then toddled off to Barnes and Noble for lunch and to look at some books on drawing and painting. After spending a couple of hours getting inspired, I flew home and got out the Set-A-Color paints that I had bought on clearance a few weeks ago.

My first step was to take 2 fat quarters of PFD fabric and lay them out side by side. I then wet one of them and started adding colors of paint. I added streaks of color to the wet piece and blocks of color to the dry one.

The dry one ended up with a lot of white areas, so I took a blue paint and diluted it down a lot and then did a color wash over the colored splotches. I also added some extra water to the splotches to see if I could get them to run a bit….that part didn’t really work.

After they dried, I tool some stamps that I had on hand and used Elmer’s Gel glue to stamp a resist onto the fabric (I left the splotchy one for another day). I started out spreading the glue onto the stamp using a foam brush but quickly realized that my fingers worked better.

After I had tried a lot of different stamp designs, I added some glue lines and dots to finish off the piece. The biggest problem that I had was that, once the glue dried, I could not easily tell where I had already stamped.

After the glue had dried completely (hastened by the 90 degree afternoon heat and my hair dryer), I prepared to do a color wash over the top of the dyed piece.

I was planning to use Set-A-Color paints, but the dark purple that I wanted to use was fairly thick (remember I bought them on clearance) and would have to be diluted, so I decided instead to use a Dyna-Flow paint that was already very thin.

After the purple paint dried, I washed the piece in very warm water, soaking out all of the glue.

The resulting piece is a fun example and I am pleased with my first efforts. I have learned a few things…..

Firstly, I used too many different kinds of flower stamps. It would have looked more cohesive if I had stuck to only a few.

Secondly, the red paint was too different in color from the others as it tends to stick out more.

For my next try, I want to do basically the same thing, but use several different colors in the final wash and see if it will get a batik look.

Anyway…..lots of fun!!!