Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Pitiful experiments 05-04-10


I've tried so many ideas with Rayna Gillman's "challenge" and few have worked as I thought they might. One thing I had hoped to do is modify the fabrics in the block with some kind of paint. I have a small selection of things I have tried over the years, including Shiva paint sticks, but I haven't used any of them for a very long time. I have only used the metallic sticks in the past. But I got them out, peeled them, found a rubber stamp design to make a rubbing and rubbed away. But the metallic seems sort of 'over the top'. Today I stopped at a shop that has a nice selection of items for the art quilt maker - Soft Expressions is an online business that also welcomes walk-in customers and their office/warehouse is only about a mile from my house. http://www.softexpressions.com/index.html

And I bought some non-metallic Shivas. After I had experimented a bit I remembered what I had heard about them being more difficult to use than the metallic ones. The putrid green on the right is actually supposed to be yellow and it has a pattern from the rubber stamp I rubbed it on. The white is a little grainy, but the black went on smoothly. At any rate, I don't think Shivas are what I need on this project. But I will keep working at the challenge. I do feel bad about missing the deadline, but sometimes life gets in the way of what we might prefer to be doing.

I still have Corky and will need to get him to his grooming appointment in LBeach by 8:30am. When his parents arrived at Dulles Airport this morning they discovered that JetBlue had screwed up their reservations and the first flight they could get out on is tomorrow morning at 7am Eastern time. So, I had better get some sleep.

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2 comments:

Louise in SW Saskatchewan said...

Del - keep your eye out for Caran d'Arche NeoColor II watersoluble Crayons. Dick Blick often has them on sale for up to 70% off.

they are not as "in your face" as the Shiva stix. You can do many of the same things with these as with the Shiva stix and they are heat settable. You also have the option of using them dry like crayons, wet crayon on dry fabric, dry crayon on wet fabric and you can always use them dry then wet them with a wet paintbrush to make them more watercolour like.

I particularly like using them on silk - on my altered photos I grayscale, alter and print on Jacquard silk sheets.

I started with a set of 30 and now have a set of 84. You can buy them as small as sets of 10. They are a bit of an "investment" like many art supplies so that's why I wait till I can get them on a good sale.

Rayna said...

Don't knock yourself out - it's not that important. If you're not having fun, do something else!