Found Project

I found this stitched/painted/doodled eucalyptus project from a while back and it reminded me what fun things are possible with free motion stitching. I love the wonky and wonderful shapes. 

I'm actually quite fond of it...so I'll add it to my list of things to try again. That list is getting pretty long. 

Somebody somewhere said: 

Grateful for where I'm at....excited about where I'm going.

Yup!

Speaking of cyanotype...I have 10 cards ready to go for the garden store and a few more in progress. Some are painted...some have just gold splatters....some have both...and a few are just simple prints.

Just a touch of gold on this one letting the vinegar blobs shine.

The Little Project That Could

Subtitle: I think I Can!

It's not uncommon for me to abandon a project gone wrong. I cut things up....toss unfinished projects in a drawer....or just throw them away.

But there was something about this little leaf project that I just couldn't let go of. I had to try and save it.

Like the little blue engine in the children's book....I started by saying I think I can...I think I can....I think I can....and I ended saying I thought I could!

So I thought I would recap the crazy journey of this little project that could. 

After the free motion stitching the watercolor bled like crazy on this particular fabric....and I'm still wondering why in the world I kept going.

And the watercolor splatters didn't help....it looked horrible.

I tried using green watercolor over the whole background. I didn't think it could look worse...but it did. 

The next day I decided to just rinse the whole thing in the sink thinking the watercolor would mostly wash out....or bleed together making an all over fallish color. Nope! the background was a pale putrid yellow...and the leaves lost most of their vibrancy. This is the only photo I have of that phase...I think this is right after I added the green watercolor. The yellow was even worse.

It was probably time to just give up and chuck it. But I kept kept going. I think I can....I think I can....I think I can.

I abandoned watercolor and switched to acrylic paint. First I thought about painting the whole background blue...and I tried a couple different options at one end. I liked the drama...and the way it showcased the leaves....but it was going to be too hard for it not to look messy. Posca pens would have been helpful...but sometimes they drag on the fabric and splatter....so that wasn't a good option. I didn't want spatters on the leaves. Oy!

So using a tiny paintbrush over the last couple of evenings...I used a slightly watered down white acrylic paint and carefully painted around all the rest of the leaves. TWICE!

The first layer of the acrylic paint reactivated the watercolor a bit and tinted the white paint. I didn't really mind it...but in the end I did a quick second coat to make it a little more crisp and clean. Or at least cleaner.

I added a bit more color in the leaves with colored pencil because I didn't dare go back to watercolor.

I actually liked that there's still a bit of its history peeking through. There is always beauty in the imperfection.  

The usable finished piece ended up being smaller than I thought....so I turned it into a coaster. Now it has form and function.  I thought I could! So I did!

Here's the back. Phew!

Obsessed With Creating

"How to get your art into the world: be obsessed with creating and in keeping the fire burning and rising. Then let it go, almost like a balloon. Be completely detached with where is lands, or who sees it or how many people if affects.  Just completely free it from you. Then, with empty hands, go and create something new."  Victoria Erickson.  

I stopped in to see Margie today. The first two blooms on her amaryllis were done...a third is full and fabulous ...and two or three more are on the way.  

And I will admit....I almost brought these spent blooms home to dry.....

and as I write this I'm kind of regretting that I didn't. I love them!

Some of you might be glad when Art Hearts are behind me...but I do think the tips and tricks I'm sharing can apply to other collage and card making. 

I took 12 Art Heart kits to the local Handiwork shop yesterday....and I'm still filling envelopes. I want each envelope and kit to have one mounted handmade Art Heart....so for now...I'm still "obsessed with creating" them.

I do like just plain white as a background on some them like I shared a few days ago...but I also still want to use painted papers when it works.  

I thought this would be a good time to share a little bit about my mounting process. 

Here I glued 4 pieces of painted papers together...and it was my intention for them to be a little off. I stitched on the heart BEFORE I trimmed up the paper.  If I cut the background first...I would never get the heart centered...or where I wanted it. I'm the master of crooked.  

Once it was stitched....then I trimmed it up using my rotary cutter and a ruler leaving as much border as I want all the way around.  And I WILL use the  tiny scraps.

I do the same thing when I mount it onto a background...whether it's white or a color. 

Here I stitched on the trimmed heart image....THEN I trim it up the border. There is NO way I could center it perfectly or get it straight on a precut card.  

I pull my threads to the back and tie them off.

Here's another example....I used a combination of  a couple painted papers and a book page for the background.  I think it's soft and pretty framed in white.

 

And the background on this one is a painted paper scrap and scrapbook paper. I use really cheap watercolor paper for the border paper...no use using the good stuff! 

I'm keeping the fire burning and rising!

Too much?  ha ha...I know. 😉

In Motion

I've got at least a half dozen projects in motion right now.....I'm having trouble keeping them straight.  There are piles all over the studio...and it would probably be a good idea to focus on just one...or even two.  But that's not Wanda's way.

If that last line doesn't make sense....you can read this post.  The whole quote about Wanda's way is at the end of the link.  For better or worse....Wanda's way...is my way: https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2023/03/mediocrity.html

More common ground with Wanda:

https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2023/03/back-to-mud.html

There are a few things finished...or nearly finished.  I made a little tag from a pan pastel print. It was a simple circular design that I didn't necessarily love....but once I added the white swirl everything changed.

I added asemic writing around the edge with a paint pen.  I know what I was thinking when I wrote it...but it's unreadable.  

The back is commercial paper that I tinted with pan pastels....getting good use out of Roseanne's gift. There's a lot on my mind.

I couldn't get this idea out of my head until I tried...and it's one of the things in progress. It may end up in the art journal.....I think it could be pretty cool with a quote along these lines.

I stitched strips of the pan pastel prints together on thin interfacing using decorative stitches on my machine.  Then I filled in some of the spaces in the stitching with white paint. 

     

I love these little bottles with the pins.....you can get a nice dimensional dot of paint with them....and great swirls.

I keep Art Glitter Glue in one (new favorite)...and slightly diluted white paint in the other.  I had to add the washi tape around the glue...because I've gotten them mixed up before.  These bottles are easy to squeeze and they don't clog....very often.

You can see in the background of the bottle photos that I have a heart project going on too.

I've got an idea in motion that's got me playing around with all kinds of hearts. More on that soon...ish.

Grid

A week or so ago I seized an opportunity and uses my gelli print rejects to make an art journal spread.  At the time I wished I would have stitched a grid rather than a swirl.

Today I seized another opportunity and cut up my recent not so great pan pastel pints and made another scrappy piece. And this time I stitched a grid.

I love this color combo...it reminded me of the sky in Becky's anchor image.

I decided to leave the irregular edges...and loose threads and started working on another spread in the art journal today.  I'm not quite done...so will share the finished pages tomorrow.

There was a pre-cut stubby page in the middle of the spread I'm working on....so I added a focal point. I used the pan pastels to add color to this commercial metallic paper....and sealed it with a fixative so the color wouldn't rub off. I couldn't stitch it into the book....so I pre-stitched the zig-zag and glued it in.  I think it looks stitched in!

I love this paper from Paper Source...and the beauty is it can be painted any color you want it to be. 

Full disclosure....soon after I did that last project I had enough scraps to do another piece.

I couldn't stop thinking about stitching a grid.

So that's what I did. I should have just left it alone....

I loved it with just the stitching.

But silly me....I painted a checkerboard with a white paint...and didn't like it at all. 

I lost all the color variation and texture in the green prints....I almost threw it away. 

But today I use the pastels to cover another piece of this fabulous Paper Source paper....so maybe I can turn this gridded disappointment into another opportunity.

It's a Save!

Subtitle: Round Two  🎈🎉

Round two of Margie's birthday celebration was a Zoom call this afternoon with her three children...and me. 

We had a wonderful visit filled with stories and laughter.

My thumb is getting better....so I've been gradually doing little projects around the house and studio.  I can tell my thumbs are still vulnerable so I'm limiting things like cutting and squeezing paint tubes. I've been slowly working on my art exchange cards....but I also played around with one of the leaf and pine needle experiments.  

I'm sharing my end result first...because it felt hopeless in the middle. But in the end I kind of liked it.  

And....I still have a few chunks of the painting to play with for something else.

As I shared a few days ago....

it started with neon puddles around some earthy debris which dried into some interesting textures.

I was inspired by work that Dotty Seiter  has been doing recently where she layers paint, marks, scribbles, and bits of this and that to her work to create something that tells a story. I've dabbled in this several times....but have never felt like I've figured it out.

It seemed like I was just making a mess....and got a little stuck with what to do next. So I cut it up into chunks....then ended up cutting it up into even smaller chunks. 

I fiddled with the pieces for a while thinking I might make a notecard or small collage.......but in the end decided to make a page for my art journal. 

So (too) late last evening I created a little paper quilt of sorts using a striped watercolor and some painted metallic  commercial papers to break up the busy blocks.

I tried to anchor the whole things down with some wonky circle sewing....but I used the wrong thread color.  You could barely see it.  When I went to bed....I was a bit discouraged.

I was right....in the light of day the stitching was barely visible and the whole thing seemed chaotic and busy. 

My goal today was to try and save it.

I liked the wonky pattern the stitch lines created so I filled in some of the spaces between the lines with diluted white paint. The stitching was now the focal point. 

I also painted a very light wash of white over the whole things to unify it a bit and knock down some of the bright chaos.

I think it's a save!

My takeaway here is that a piece needs some light/white space to help it breathe. And if I forget to put it in....I can just add it!  

It seemed to pair well with this leaf print that was already stitched into my art journal. I whitewashed the bright green print and outlined it with a white paint pen to tie it in even more. I added a quote and ended up being quite happy with this art journal spread.

"Something new always changes right in front of your eyes....it just happens." William Eggleton

UFP

Paul's cousin Caren and her husband David are visiting from Colorado so we did a little touring this afternoon.  It was raining....so we didn't get out much. But it's still fun to drive around our lovely city.

While they were visiting Margie this morning....I started working on the Anchor Image Exchange project....that's what I'm going to call it....unless I come up with something better.  I will be working on both mine and Tracie's images this week. I usually have to play around with several ideas...then let them sit for a bit until I figure out what I'm going to do.

So while I'm mulling things over I decided I'm going to try and get closure on a few UFP's (un-finished projects) I have laying around.  Things I want to give away...and maybe a few I'll try and sell at the consignment store or get out into the world somehow.  There could very well be dozens of these UFP's in my studio.

I made this wooly leaf piece back in 2020 right after I did the Swirls of Color class with Izzy Moore. The technique was inspired by Izzy's class and the design was inspired by Ellen Lindner.  If you're interested in the process....I wrote about it here: https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2020/08/wooly-leaf.html

On the left is where I started this morning...and the right is where I ended.  This is going to my friend Jane...who I think is giving it to her daughter Kate. 

I found a paint panel that was the right size and trimmed the piece to fit on top.

I cut a border out of hand dyed navy fabric and fused a stip of webbing on one edge.  In this photo the paper is still on the webbing....but I took it off before I stitched.

I stitched it onto the piece mitering the corners just like I would do a quilt binding.  You can see the fusible webbing edge which gets pulled around and fused to the back of the wooden panel with a hot iron.  You can see my Swirls of Color project and some photos of this binding technique here in this post: 

https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2020/07/rainbow-and-swirls.html

Here are a couple of side views. It's a clean and simple way to mount a fabric piece.

One UFP is now a finished project!  Yay!