End of Sketchbook final step

or is it?? That's the great thing about sketchbooks, You can return and work into what you have done as well as get inspired about creating something new!

Well, I don't think these stamps worked as well as I thought they would. I learned that pale backgrounds work better. Contrast with the paints I was using was poor. I think the paint was a bit thin and transparent - not great coverage. The black or black mixed colors worked the best. What do you think?

I also went back into the spots and glued the painted waxed paper on top of one page to see how an overlay or layer of printed sheer would look.

This was the waxed paper on plain white paper.

Additional spots added. Now it's time to make my first mark in the new sketchbook. Oh, fun!

End of old sketchbook step 2

A while ago I posted pictures of the last few pages in my sketchbook. I had taken a home made gelli plate and printed colors as backgrounds onto the last pages. 

I had also made some insect stamps which I posted but then made 3 additional stamps. I wanted to print them and see how they came out so I took some plants to make prints. I have done this before with leaves from trees on fabric.

This time I picked interesting plant leaves and a few weeds.

I got out a sheet of Plexiglas, my acrylic (cheap hobby) paints and a foam dauber and went to town. I will try to tell each leaf used.

Comfrey

Unknown weed - very nice leaf too. You can also see where the page closed and the acrylic paint stuck and peeled off the paper from the opposite side. It actually looks nice.

Lilac (Lincoln)

Golden Rod appropriately printed in yellow

Hosta I had to hunt for a small leaf

Lilac again

Dandelion 

Catalpa Tree

Zone 3 Magnolia (Ballerina)

Catalpa

Catalpa

Unknown weed again.

I cleaned off my dauber a few times

And the aftermath of my printing project and food for thought

I place waxed paper over the leaf after turning it paint side down onto the substrate and used my hand to press the leaf onto the substrate. In this case I used paper but I did the same when printing on fabric. Food for thought: Printing on sheer fabric and having that as a layer.

The Plexiglass - yummy!

This was just a fun thing to try

I am a big Ruth Isset fan. I found this blog post about one of her workshops and I thought I would try it. I used cheese cloth, scrim, harem cloth, lawn, plain cotton, haboti, dupioni, and few other fabrics.

And here is the link to the original blog post with lots of photographs!!

Prepping the last sheets

This all started with me wanting to do some stamping and possible collage work with my new bug stamps. I actually think I may do a few more insects stamps as well. 

I took out the old home-made gelli plate from months ago and it was in fine shape just like when I put it way.

It fits better than the commercial gelli which I also have but rarely use.

These are some inexpensive Walmart acrylics that I bought for the students to use in my stamp making workshop.

Some of the prints

The 2 below are the gelli with water sprayed on to "print off" the last of the paint.

Drying with spacers between each page (includes old toothbrushes, chunks of Soft-kut left over from the stamps, markers and even a palette knife and scissors 

Next is stamping and collage and a fond farewell to this sketchbook!