Something concrete from my creativity excercises

**Before my post, here is a link from a follower who made some great monoprints on colored cloth. Fabulous!!

I sat down for the 15 minutes creative pump priming and I couldn't get up. I feel a new quilt just around the corner. These squares are about 7-8".

End of monoprinting

Here are the final monoprinted pieces after wash, dry and ironing. The first one I REALLY like and may  do more around this.

This is the piece of apron fabric from Fingerprint with the directions for sewing the apron. 

A new twist

I saw this on a YouTube video. It's in another language but you don't need to understand the language to understand the actions.

I can't get the video to down load but it is here

This is what I did with what I saw on the video.

I put these two face to face (dye side in) and sprayed both sides with soda ash water

I threw them in a plastic bag and the next morning popped it in my Dye Only microwave for 30 seconds. The next day I did the ones below.

Covered each with plastic after spraying with soda ash water.

Now batching with Rice Bags and covered with a towel.

Let the monoprinting begin

These are two sheets of lexan I got as scraps from the glass store. One is 10" X 12.5" and larger one is 12" X 21.5

I cut the fabric the same size as the lexan but the big mistake I made was not ironing it before I started to print. However I DID remember to put my new apron on (when I started to wipe the paint on my new jeans). Jeans are clean!!

I used ProFab fabric paint.

Not enough paint

Perfect amount of paint

I puled the fabric tight on the ends but I'm still happy with the print.

First print on the large lexan and too much paint

Nice print, just the right amount of noise

This I really like

And of course I had to involve my sketchbook since there was paint on the roller

Silly Purse - rethought

At danger of being called a wacko with a tin foil hat, I have to say wearing the cell phone gave me pause. Remember I know nothing about cell phones but after 9 months of breast cancer treatment, I started to worry about phone signals/waves being directed at my chest. I have a friend whose friend got a tumor just behind her ear which she blamed on a cell phone. I talked to my son who is a Neurologist and he said to put some foil between the phone and my chest. This is what I did.

First I ironed fusible on to a rectangle of Reynolds foil on both sides. 

I tore off the release paper and ironed a rectangle of deep pink fabric on one side then removed the release paper from the other side.

I turned the purse inside out and ironed the fusible foil/fabric to the side I call the back.

When I was done, I turned it right side out and ironed. I don't know if this helps but I feel a bit better. No tin foil hats though (smile)

I'm a winner

I have frequently had give-aways on my blog. Just this past week, Vickie won the Tricksters Hat book which is winging it's way to her as I type!! Well, this week I won something. One of my Dutch woman friends, Joke, was giving away a beautiful hand made necklace on her blog Waterlilies. I left a comment and I was the winner!. This will come just in time for my Thanksgiving Day dinner.

Thank you Joke. I will treasure this. Also thank you for all the colorful art you create. When I think of you, I think of rich saturated colors - very appealing to me.

Something silly

So I am probably the last person on earth to get a cell phone. I actually had a track phone (flip phone). I didn't know how to make contacts or record a voice message for incoming calls. Basically I was beyond pathetic. I do have to say I have had a desk top since 1995. It was DOS and it was 256 mb. I laugh now that I have thumb drives that have 2 gbs!! I have a laptop and a tablet and even a first generation Kindle which I never use. But NOW I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. It does everything except make your bed!! Operationally, it isn't much different than my Galaxy Tablet but I think it does more.

On my trip to Europe, I realized I needed a smart phone because I couldn't print a boarding pass but it seemed everyone else had one of those "squares" on their phones - sheesh. I didn't even know what those squares were. Well, whatever, I now have a smart phone. This is where the silly comes in.

I can never find it. I put it down and can't remember where. I decided to make a phone "neck purse" so I could wear the phone around my neck. Talk about being a slave to technology!! 

I bought a "hard case" to protect the phone, one I didn't particularly care for but I had no intention of owning a BLACK phone. I'm all about color so with a black and white choice and this one, I picked this one.

NOW I need to make that neck purse so I will have the phone with me. I have a big rambling New England Farm house and I had 5 phones on my land line now I am tethered to this cell phone - NO complaints! I love it. OK. Neck purse. I figured if I had to look at it all day, it had better be made out of beautiful fabric. I started with a piece of deconstructed screen printing. I fused it to acrylic felt.

I just hemmed the top and bar tacked a thin gross grain ribbon to the sides.

 One side

The other

Finished

I purposely made it sticking out the top so I could grab it easily. I like it!! (Notice dye stains all over my sweatshirt?)

A great idea

And it came from Nienke. She told me about an idea she had read about and I LOVED it. The idea was to use citrus slices on a deconstructed screen.

I wanted to put the dye on the inside of the screen and hoped the slices would stick to the thickened dye

With orange thickened dye

Green thickened dye