Sunday 30 March 2014

Playtime

Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK.  This is not quite the same as Mother's Day in the US and Australia.

"Children and young people who were "in service" (as household servants) were given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their "mother" church). The children would pick wild flowers along the way to place in the church or give to their mothers. Eventually, the religious tradition evolved into the Mothering Sunday secular tradition of giving gifts to mothers.Wikipedia

I had a lovely FaceTime call with Andy & Naomi in Australia.

And I've played with my Gelli Plate.  I wondered what would happen if I used my Ranger Distress ReInkers and a foam roller.  These are all the colours I have.


I put 3 colours on the plate and used the foam roller to push the ink around the plate.  It doesn't look as though you have much ink when it's spread about but there's lots in the sponge so you can keep applying ink from the roller without adding more ink from the bottle.

This is on cartridge paper with the Stencil Girl Random Circles stencil.

And this is on Deli Paper


A change of colour and a bigger roller with the ink spread on the plate.






I put bubble wrap onto the inked plate and then 'stamped' it onto paper.

This was the print off the plate.




I used some chipboard feathers as a mask on the plate but the print didn't take well.

 However the print from the plate was better.

I tried using fresh leaves but this didn't work too well as I was too impatient.
 

I inked the plate and put screwed up cling film on.



 Which gave me this.


I had tried putting the alphabet roller through the ink on the plate but nothing happened with the print but I was able to roll the stamp on a piece of cartridge paper.  Then I used that and another piece of paper to clean the gelli plate.

I put green ink on the plate with a Stencil Girl Circle Tile stencil and took a print using the paper which is above on the right.

I carried on taking prints on top of the already printed paper.  Some work better than others.





It was great to play and now I have quite a few backgrounds to play about with.  I think the results I got looked better on the cartridge paper.  Will have to have another 'what if?' day sometime soon.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice



Saturday 29 March 2014

Journal Quilt for March

I wrote about my journal quilts for January and February last month.

The theme for this month's landscape was line.  First we were asked to make marks with different types of implements and then using our source material make a collage using torn up magazines.  To be honest none of this appealed to me and so I have left it all right to the last minute.


I don't have very much fabric but I did buy the one on the left and the middle one when I was at The Bramble Patch.   For the last two journal quilts it was suggested that we use rusted material and I tried to master the technique but was totally unsuccessful.  However a friend gave me some rusted fabric (thanks Annie) shown here on the right.

I dyed the three fabric with a green dye and it is actually darker than this photo shows.

I also dyed some of the fabric that I had previously painted and dyed at the Make It Personal class.  I tore the fabrics into strips and laid them on top of the cotton fabric and wadding.

I ironed a piece of bondaweb on and then ironed the fabric strips on although that wasn't totally successful.  So I added some pins.

I machined the whole thing.

It probably needs some hand stitching and it does need a focal point but I will come back to it later in the year.  Sometimes you have to walk away from something for a while!   I still haven't decided how to edge the quilts so have left it rough at the moment.

This is what it would look like if I trimmed the edges.  Each quilt is A4 (letter) size.

Here's the quilt with the collage on the right.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice


Tuesday 25 March 2014

Make your Mark

I signed up for an online class called Make YOUR Mark taught by Robin Mead.  I have taken my usual approach and watched bits of the videos, looked at the photos and ignored everything else.  Sorry Robin.

This week's challenge on DLP was to have someone draw in your book and then for you to finish the page.  There's no way someone else was going to draw in my book!  When I was a teacher if I was away on a course the work I left for the pupils was always to be done on paper because I couldn't bear for another teacher to write in MY pupils' books.

So I stamped a Dyan Reaveley stamp instead.  I worked on the theory that it was still someone else's drawing and even then I managed not to stamp the first image correctly!

I drew all the lines in pencil and then went over the lines with a thin black pen.  I rubbed out the pencil lines.

I went back over some of the lines with a thicker pen and doodled in other parts with the thin pen.

I used a water brush and my Neocolor II water soluble crayons to paint the page.


Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice


Monday 24 March 2014

Make It Personal Session 2 Day 1

So yesterday I showed you the gelli printing.  On the first day we did rubbings with wax oil crayons (Neocolor 1) which acted as a resist to the fabric dye.

I used 2 string stamps and a texture plate I made previously.  I also made a rubbing plate with appliglue.



After taking the rubbings the fabric and papers were dyed using fabric dyes.
 
 The fabric with just the rubbing
 



And with the dye.  On the fabric I used dye mixed with Manutex but on the paper it was just the dye powder mixed with water.


Other papers

On brown paper

 On repair tissue and dyed.



As we work we have a heavy duty paper tablecloth underneath and this is what I ended up with.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice