Yup....More Marbling

Nationally known fiber artist - Laura Sims was originally the instructor of this workshop. Due to health reasons, she had to pull out but was able to come and spend an afternoon with us.  She was donned with a "tiara" and gave us the "wave".  She is one of the most talented artists and fabric marblers I know - watching her is magical;  we were thrilled to have a little part of her if only for a short time.

 One of her tricks is the size whisk she uses for distributing paint.  This whisk is actually for cleaning woks and can be found in kitchen shops; it's huge and so much fun to use.

 One of the marbling techniques Laura is know for is her Italian Veining which looks beautiful on the surface.

 Another technique which she developed is the "2 eyedropper" distribution of paint.  She has both eyedroppers going at one time using different color paints. A base color is dropped first.  As the 2 colors merge together, they squeeze the base color into tiny veins.

 So your piece looks like this -it was fascinating to watch.

 Another technique Laura developed is to use an eyedropper to "draw" on the surface of the methyl. It spreads and moves so you can make a picture of sorts.  It's best to do on clean methyl with a white tray so you can see what you're doing.

 It was very unique looking when finished.

 Here are some of my attempts at the techniques Laura showed us.

 One of the nice things about marbling is that you can overmarble without re-alumming the fabric - just let it dry and marble again. The piece below was not terrific, so I decided to overmarble it, used Photo-Flow to open up areas and allow original design to show through. It was a save.  There were some pieces that were beyond saving, we kept saying "you can't beat a dead horse" and so they became our "dead horses".

 This one below was almost a dead horse, so I made a stones pattern and used Photo-Flow to open up areas - interesting but bold.

 The last morning of the workshop, I was doing lots of veining patterns as they went fast and I was determined to use up the alummed fabric.

 These kind of prints are nice for doing silk screens on or running through the ink jet printer.

Such a great week - thank you Karen and Laura for your wonderful expertise and guidance.