The Pink Artist Drawing August 1-October 15, 2008

We invite you to join the party!

Please come and join the festivities, a joyous blog party happening August 1- October 15, 2008 on our blogs and in our homes. Mark those calendars to attend an event orchestrated by The Pink Artists to raise awareness & donations for breast cancer research.
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We're fighting back with ART! Won't you join us?

Follow the links for more information.

Love Squared--Pink Artists' Challenge

She's done! Go here to see the details and many, many more pictures. Monica did an incredible job.

I am so excited. I found one of my squares. Even more fun, it's a near neighbor to my friend Liela's square! Leila spotted this, not me. I'm not nearly that observant.

Take It Further & Weekend Projects

Looking back I got a lot done this weekend but I am feeling frustrated because I didn't get into that "zone" until Sunday night and then I had a hard time stopping and getting ready for the week. I was up way too late as a result and am tired today.

I had so much fun doing the Pink squares last month, I kept going. I had found a little silver cardboard open-top box that's the perfect size for the squares and I decided to fill it and keep it on my desk at work. Here are my first three squares. I used more markers and paint this time. I used Sharpies and colored the backgrounds and also colored some white plastic produce netting. It's hard to see in the scans but I left some of the netting loose and raised from the fabric. The shadows form nice designs. I also used painted cheesecloth, an image transfer, and beads.

Last week I played a bit in Photoshop and learned about layers and created this image for the March TIF challenge. I had wanted to play more in Photoshop for a long time and I really learned a lot. I manipulated a micro-photograph of sand to enhance the colors and texture and then layered it with photographs of the earth taken from outer space. I then added the text. Pretty basic stuff but I feel a sense of accomplishment.

I sized the image in a Word document and added a background to the page and brought it home to print. When printed on the fabric, the colors were dramatically changed and not at all what I'd hoped for. My husband and I worked with another photograph for which I had the original photo and not just the Word document and that came out much better so I plan to take the original art for this home and try again one night this week.

Tonight is the Homewood Embroiderer's Guild meeting. It's the last one before our Monica Ferris Lecture Luncheon so we'll see how ticket sales are going and plan favors.

Pink!

Jane and I had a fun play date on Friday night and I ended up with a total of eight 2" pink squares for the challenge. These things are addictive!

I used pages from all of my various transfers. The pink one top left is a gel medium transfer. The beige one next to it is a direct-iron on transfer. The pink one in the second row wiht lace is also a gel medium transfer. Below that in row three the left-had design uses a fusible web transfer, as does the blue one next to it.

I also found a little box that I'd saved from something--the squares fit into it perfectly! I want to show them at my guild and then they're off to Monica for her community art doll project.

Blogger is giving me fits tonight and nothing seems to be working right so I'm just going to get these pictures up and try more later this week. I've uploaded this photo at least a dozen times and when I try to move it where I want it, it disappears and I have to start from scratch all over again. And each time a photo's added, it changes the spacing of everything!

I did samples of photo transfers this weekend, lots of hearts using the Clover template, and came up with some ideas and sketches for my TIF challenge.

Pink

Here are my first attempts at making 2" pink squares for the Pink Artist doll challenge by Monica Magness.

The pictures were from magazines and I used fusible hem-webbing to capture the image. I wet and rubbed off the paper and then fused the design to gingham. I then used fabric markers and Sharpies and a gold gel pen to color in the images and shade the edges a bit to blend them into the fabric.

The words were clipped from some law texts I'd rescued from the trash heap. The other trims and threads were things I had hanging around.

I backed them with the same prequilted fabric I used for the TIF piece. It provides a nice body to them and isn't too thick.

Last week I printed out two pages of faces for an experiment with a variety of small faces on each page. I coated one page with acrylic gel medium from Golden. I layered several thin coats, letting it dry in between. Then I let it dry for about 24 hours. I soaked it in cool water and rubbed off the paper from the back. The dried gel stretches so you need to be careful to work on a smooth, flat surface and mostly in a gentle circular motion to keep it from stretching too much. When it dried, I could see spots where I'd missed paper bits so I wet it again and rubbed some more.

The images are embedded in the clear gel. I know I can use the medium to glue them onto paper or fabric. I'm not sure how the gel will hold up to stitching. I plan to cut them apart and use them in projects as yet unknown (maybe some more pink squares).

I learned this technique back in the 70s in college. I made a collage from magazine photos, trimming them carefully to avoid overlap (so there was no glue on the back of the paper). I coated my collage with the medium and built up several layers. After removing the paper, I used this as a negative to make a photo-etched plate and then printed my etchings.

The second half of my experiment was to take the second page of images and iron on Wonder-Under, then remove the paper. It wasn't a failure in that I learned what doesn't work. The Wonder-Under was just too light and fell apart when I tried to remove the paper.

I've seen this someplace on the Internet and Bond-a-Web was recommended, which appears to be the same as Wonder-Under. Of course I can't find the site now! I know the technique works from using it with the hem tape and the hem tape was a lot heavier than the Wonder-Under.

I have since learned there's a heavy-duty Wonder-Under that would likely be better. Since I already have the regular, I plan to experiment by layering a few sheets together.

I want to get this to work because I like the aged and worn look the fusible gave to the images. The gel images are exactly like the photos. So I'm off to experiment some more.