Mandala Faux Batik (for Creative Expressions)

Posted on 4th December 2013 by perfectly4med

When I saw the contents of the latest DT goodie bag lots of ideas sprang to mind. We’ve been sent the newest set of ‘Henna’ inspired Creative Expressions ‘Singles’ stamps – rubber stamps that are pre-mounted and cut ready for slapping onto your acrylic blocks and printing with straight away. This project uses embossing powder and spray dyes to create a faux batik effect on a handkerchief – although any cotton fabric would work just as well. For more making details, read on 🙂

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Seasonal Colour Palette – Dove of Peace

Posted on 21st April 2013 by perfectly4med

I like a challenge… and I like it even more when I get inspiration, have the materials, and more importantly can snatch a moment to get the piece done. So it is with some delight that I share with you my entry to the Ranger Ink ‘Seasonal Color Palette’ Challenge: to create any project using the theme colours based around the Adirondack Color Washes in Butterscotch, Meadow, Espresso and Sailboat Blue. It’s a 12×12 inch canvas:

From concept to final outcome took approximately 3 hours, with only two hours of hands-on crafting. I started by using Adobe Illustrator to produce an outline of the starburst, dove and olive branch, printing it out four times. Each copy was then sprayed with fixative spray to seal it, which stopped the colour wash bleeding through. I cut out the various items to produce stencils – the central outline, the eyes and beak, the branch, and then the starburst ‘prongs’. I used repositionable spray glue to coat the back and adhere the stencil firmly to the canvas before spraying each of the colours on in turn, using a heat tool to dry and heat set between colours. Aside from a bit of overspray and bleed, and a little stencil misalignment, I’m quite pleased with the result. I did a little touching up here and there with some of the Distress Paints, which may be hard to see as they picked up some of the dye layers beneath.

Handprinted Quilts

Posted on 8th January 2013 by perfectly4med

I’ve just put the finishing touches to two small quilts. They both feature my own pattern design, which I hand screen printed at college onto fabric offcuts using black textile ink. The first shows the patten, unadulterated, quilted using black cotton and free motion machine stitch round each of the circle motifs. The second is dyed with Adirondack Color Wash sprays (which despite my best efforts still covered everything nearby!), dried, heat set, rinsed, ironed and then quilted in the same way. Both are hand bound and labelled. I use backstitch to hand sew labels for my quilts as this is unlikely to wash off! They are both 22.5″x42″ in size.

Quilt No.5 – ‘Pattern No. 1’

Quilt No. 6 – ‘Rainbow’

WOW! with a bit of Creative Chemistry 101

Posted on 24th March 2012 by perfectly4med

I’m up early, all excited about my stint at Hobbycrafts at the NEC, Birmingham today and tomorrow on the WOW! Embossing Powders stand. They have just brought out some silicone moulds – come and see the jewellery pieces I’ve made (I’ll pop them on here next week when I have a moment). Also created last night using their new embossed resist card with inspiration from the Creative Chemistry 101 Day Five teaching on Distress Stains comes this little (8x20in) sampler for the show:

Mixed Media Still Life #3

Posted on 16th March 2012 by perfectly4med

It’s Friday, and another mixed media lesson 🙂

This week we had to do a candle wax resist rendition of the still life – clear wax on whitish paper made the initial stages very tricky. However, as the dye wash revealed, I did fairly well! A bit of charcoal and a smidge of oil pastel here and there, and I was done.

Mixed Media Still Life #2

Posted on 9th March 2012 by perfectly4med

I’ve done another still life this week – this time using oil pastel resist technique. The objects were drawn in oil pastels first and then a dye colour wash applied for the fore and background. A bit of bleach, charcoal and chalk later and I got this:

Mixed media still life

Posted on 2nd March 2012 by perfectly4med

Here’s a pic of this mornings session at college working BIG – A1 portrait size mixed media still life. The colour wash used textile dyes, a bit of bleach and then charcoal and white chalk embellishments.

And here’s what we were drawing…

Paper Towel Printing – Distress Inks

Posted on 16th June 2011 by perfectly4med

I’ve carried on playing with my newly discovered technique, and thought I ought to try Paper Towel Printing with distress inks. Here’s a step by step guide:

Firstly, place your sheet of paper towel onto a glass mat or other non-absorbent surface. Wet by spritzing with water.

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Then I spritzed with homemade glimmer mist spray – good to have a background colour. I think it also helps the other colours keep in their place… This one is Peeled Paint with gold perfect pearls.

[To make your own mist – take one dropper full of reinker and add it to a mini-mister. Add a small scoop of perfect pearls. Fill with water to three quarters full, replace cap and shake vigorously. Spritz.]

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Drop on ink from your choice of distress ink reinker – this is Faded Jeans.

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Spritz each of those dots with water until they start bleeding.

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Repeat with more colours – this is Spiced Marmalade.I also added Dusty Concord.

Spritz with water.

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Start printing! Lay a tag/paper/cardstock/ATC on the towel and smooth down with your fingers. You may see water squeeze out of the edges at first – that’s what you’re after 🙂 You’ll also find the colours start to spread a little more into one another.

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All of this from one sheet? Yup – and they are all double-sided as well. It seems that the colours stay pretty much where you put them, so this would be great to carry a colour theme throughout a tag book, or art journal, or across several pieces of cardstock for scrapbooking or card making.

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And there was still some left over to do my art journal 🙂

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Close up of the tags – they’re a bit blotchy still as I didn’t wait to dry them before sharing this blog entry with you! Lots of texture on some, lovely watercolour effects. Love it!

Space – an art journal page

Posted on 10th May 2011 by perfectly4med

A completed double page spread in my Moleskine art journal. I always gesso my Moleskine pages as they seem to be very absorbent otherwise. The background was created with Ranger’s Adirondack Color Wash sprayed onto the page, spritzed with water and then allowed to dry. At a recent art journaling workshop we were encouraged to ‘describe something’. My background reminded me of wonderful space nebulae pictures, so I chose to describe ‘Space’.

Mop-up Tags

Posted on 6th April 2011 by perfectly4med

These two tags were part of a batch that I put together yesterday morning. I’d done the background colouring some time ago, dragging the tags through some dye overspray (mopping up) after I’d been colouring a cotton apron [Adirondack Color Wash: denim, cranberry and wild plum]. They’d sat on my desk for a while before I came up with the finishing touches: the flower is an Anita’s stamp inked with Stazon Opaque White, and the Laura Ashley [Dovecraft] butterfly and branch were stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. These add layer and depth and form a lovely background for the white heat-embossed Penny Black letters and flowers [4035K] stamp. I used some as give aways and the rest I think will adorn cards or my art journal. Or possibly even some greeting cards.