Printing on fabric

In the online fabric collage workshop which I'm doing with Deborah Boschert, Lesson 2 was printing on fabric. When we chose our fabrics we needed some plain ones that would be good to personalise with some painted patterns. These were my choices of plain fabrics

I decided I'd try out a variety of designs and methods on different fabrics. Not very big pieces, but they probably won't need to be for the collage, and if I really like something it will be easily repeated.

Here are the details of each piece for my future reference and your interest. I actually did this piece in January and gathered it as a prospective addition.

Starburst sprays through stencil.

Fabric from the envelope of my stencil parcel.
Rest the fabric on an old mouse pad when you stamp to get a good impression.

Found objects are fun. The marks on the left are made with the end of a nerf gun dart.

Glued foam strips to a linoleum sample for a hand made stamp.

Pouncing paint through a stencil

Foam stamp

This method of using shiva sticks through a freezer paper stencil came from the Kemshall's "The Painted Quilt" book.

The inside of a cash register receipt paper roll

Lid and cork used together

Corrugated cardboard

Hope there's some inspiration there for you. Talk to you again in November!

Fun printing

How much fun can you have using these materials?

Glued foam shapes left over from the plates I made for gelli printing, some rubber bands, and a piece of old cricket bat grip to cardboard rolls.
Place over a foam roller and roll onto paper

Fun and quick - will have to experiment more with this.

Call back tomorrow and see the printing I've been doing on fabric.

Journal Page

Calendar journaling

This week the obvious starting point was to spray through my new stencils with lovely bright Dylusions Inks. Happy Happy Place :-)



Had time on Sunday after finishing my previous calendar spread to prepare for Monday. Had to include the stamps from my parcel too

The journal I'm working in is a hardcover sketchbook that I bought at Warehouse Stationery.

I used the smaller A5 size to create a travel journal for my niece last year.

For the calendar journaling, the pages are not heavy enough to prevent colour coming through to the other side. So I just work on alternate spreads, then glue the backs together when I'm done.

This also means I can add stitch to my pages

- I would like to do more of this

You can see my other calendar journaling pages in my Flickr set. Enjoy your weekend.

Fabric collage online workshop

Do you know Deborah Boschert's work? 

I first came across her when I bought this wonderful book

Click here to see the posts relating to Deborah on the Twelve by Twelve blog and she also features as one of the artists at The Sketchbook Challenge blog.
Click here to see Deborah's personal blog and these are a couple of her quilts that she's shared on her blog this year - you can also click the quilt titles for more information.

Tabletop Horizons

Handwritten Heritage

Dwell and Develop : supplies and close-up shots here

This is the video she created showing the process of making "Dwell and Develop "above ::
She also has a fabric collage online workshop called Branches, Buds and Blossoms 

Workshop Sample

Do I really need to do another online workshop?
It would be cool to do a fabric collage and perhaps get me into creating a different type of art - I've been interested in experimenting with mounting fabric art on canvas
Couldn't I just work on making my own collage from my own knowledge?
This might be the impetus to make me do it...when will I get around to doing this otherwise?
I'll spare you the rest of my internal debate....in the end I decided it was on special for only US$15  until 15 October (now US$25) so I had nothing to lose!
Lesson 1 was to gather our fabrics. We were told to choose a focus fabric - I have had this lovely set of fat quarters set aside waiting for the right project

I've chosen co-ordinating cottons in a range of colours, plains and patterns.

Some sheers

And some other interesting fabrics

Clockwise from top - nets, curtain fabric samples, hand-dyed felt and scrims

Of course I won't use all of this, but it is nice to have a bunch of choices!

This gathering makes me happy :-) More soon....

Delicious new stencils

I admit it - a couple of months ago I fell for ANOTHER class with Mary Ann Moss - this time her Stencilry classes: what can I say - good deal until 1st November, 2 classes for the price of one, I LOVE anything stencilling and have so enjoyed the other 2 Mary Ann Moss classes I've taken...
The actual point of this is that in one of her lessons, she demonstrated with some rubber henna hand stencils. She mentioned she bought them on ebay and I was smitten so went hunting, thinking that I wouldn't be able to afford them anyway, but - they were very affordable, including postage to New Zealand, and they arrived and they are FABULOUS!

All unique designs and even the packaging was lovely - butterfly stamps

and a fabric envelope with hand-stitched closure

This is the seller if you are interested yourself - I ordered the ones that said they were reusable. Note also the designs that arrive are different from what are shown on the site, but they clearly warn you about that, and as you can see, what I was sent are just as lovely.
I've already had a wee play.....

Calendar journaling

As suspected, this week's spread had to begin with some of the flowers I created in the 21 Secrets class with Ro Bruhn last week.

I thought I might like some extra doodles to edge the days and came up with these quite quickly

Here's how the pages evolved.

I finished the writing on this one, but then thought the page needed a bit more decoration.

Can you see how the extra black pen doodles complete the page compared to the previous stage?

After I'd done the writing for Friday (above) I found a bit more time in my day and glued down one of the border doodles. It didn't line up properly with my green writing, so I had to add doodles to make it look like it was meant to be like that and added the Saturday heading as well. I like how the doodles echo what I did on the other page in the spread. This is how I left it Friday night.

Completed by Sunday afternoon.

See my other calendar journaling pages in my Flickr set. This is already the 5th spread. Hope you'll come back to see what the next one will look like.