Gelli Arts® Faces

Hop on over to the Gelli Arts® blog to see how I created this mono-print face.

Another Mixed Media Cairn

I have finally finished another mixed media cairn piece mounted on MDF. This one has needle felt, sewn acrylic pour, collage, and resin.

Here it is hanging next to the first mixed media cairn.

Experiments with Printed Landscapes

I don't have any spectacular photographs for you today. What I do have are snaps taken as I experimented with different designs and thought through ideas.

A couple of my printed landscape strips just happened to get placed near each other on the table. This got me thinking about ways to combine several pieces. First I made some basic mock-ups with plain paper.

Did I want separate "mountain ridges" or to have them woven together? Maybe a combination of the 2?

 

Should I be consistent in the length of the zig-zag?

What if I had more than 2 mountain ranges?

And more than 2 mountain ranges woven together?

I came to the conclusion that everything looked pretty awesome so I got Gelli printing some more mountains so I could think about colours. I worked out that the colour needed to change gradually across the mountain ridge, that way I could show 2 or more zig-zags together without there being an obvious join line. The colour on the reverse needed to be contrasting so the mountains were easily seen.

I laid out the mountain ranges on the table. It didn't seem to matter how I arranged them, they still looked great. Perhaps in a gallery the viewer could rearrange them. I think it would be awesome to have an artwork that could be changed when you got bored of it.

I now have to think about how I will incorporate the cairn image into the landscapes. I'll need to use thick interfacing when these are made in fabric. I think it might get tricky to fold so I also need to do some experiments to see how that goes. Check back soon for progress.

Print and Free Machine

I've been experimenting with cutting my prints into slices and filling the space with hand and free machine stitch. This first one was done on paper. It's very fragile. I used water-soluble stabiliser to work the stitches, unfortunately once the paper was damp it started to disintegrate. I covered the whole thing in pouring medium to hold it together. It's nice to stick it up on a window and see the light shine through.

I've also tried using a print on fabric, cutting into it, and filling the gaps with stitch. I used some thicker threads in the bobbin for extra texture. I'll keep stitching into it later.

3D and Pop-up Landscape Prints

I've been playing about with making some of my landscapes and cairns 3D using pop-up paper folding techniques.

I worked out a few ideas on scrap paper first.

This one is thicker Khadi paper with some printed fabric stones sewn on top.

I cut into some Gelli® prints to make these pop-ups - I need thicker paper!

I tried a vertical fold with Gelli® print. I'll add a cairn later.

Once I've experimented a little more and got the geometry sorted out I'm going to try a sewn version using thick interfacing.

Whole Cloth Pebbles Abstract

I'm trying a whole cloth quilt technique to interpret one of my abstract designs. 

First I used a Frixion Pen to draw the design onto some cotton. The pen rubs out with the heat of friction or with an iron.

Next I quilted the whole design using thick wadding to make the pebbles raised.

The grey stripes were painted with acrylics with a little textile medium added.

For the coloured sections I used watercolour pencils activated with textile medium.

The whole thing is stretched over a frame.

Mini Mixed-Media

I'm experimenting again with mixing my media. This mini piece has a needle felted landscape with appliqued cairn motif. The pebbles are cut from the felt and backed with printed papers. It's all mounted on a mini wood panel which has been painted with acrylics. I used resin to fill in the pebbles and give them some shine. The sky has also been coated with resin.

Resin Experiments

I recently purchased some Art Resin. I love the glassy, hard, high shine surface that resin gives. I haven't used resin before so I've been experimenting with some mug coaster sized pieces first. I wanted to see how well it went over collage, paint and fabric and also to get the hang of applying the resin and getting rid of bubbles. I have much to learn! Luckily there are lots of great video tutorials on the Art Resin site.

More Play With Fabric Pebbles

Today I decided to quilt some of my fabric pebbles to make them more 3D. I also wanted to experiment more with colour so I also quilted some blank pebbles using plain cotton. Once the quilting lines are in it's easier to paint the sections as the stitching keeps the colours separated. The pebble above was painted with acrylics and Posca pens. I added a little textile medium to make the paint flow and to make it washable.

I added some extra colour to some of my acrylic pebbles using watercolour pencils and Inktense pencils. I used textile medium to activate the colour rather than water to make it washable. The fabric medium is also more viscous than water so the colours don't run together too much.

I tried a Gelli® print over a quilted pebble. The colour mostly picked up on the raised areas which was what I wanted. It's difficult to see until I cut the pebble out though. I also tried masking off my Gelli® plate with strings whilst taking the print.

I've been thinking about how to attach the pebbles to the background. I could easily sew or glue them on but I don't always like them to be raised above the background area rather than being part of it. With some scraps I tried "fabric marquetry" a technique which I've seen in wood. I cut the pebbles and their holes from pieces of similar thickness. When the pebbles are inserted into the hole they are the same level as the background. I ironed some interfacing on the back to keep them in place whilst I stitched around them.

Another way to keep the pebbles and background the same height would be to quilt the pebbles and landscape at the same time from a single piece and then paint them in. I'll try that next,