Shave Cream Anyone?

 Our Fiber Junkies group met a couple of weeks ago for a fun day of shave cream playing. My hands felt so clean and smelt so good at the end of the day...but more on that later. We begin our day with Show and Tell....our very prolific and accomplished Denny has been sewing round the clock. The following quilts are all her quilt tops, each one more beautiful than the one before.

  I think she said she does it all by machine and her skills are spot on.

  This is perhaps the most subtle in coloring but I've always loved monochromatic and especially when done in blue. They are all my fave but this one maybe a tad more.

And I love this one with the amazing and very unique border.

  Gen has been working a lot with pen and ink, coloring motifs for her wonderful journals.

So onto our technique for the day - playing with shave cream - To start, use ordinary shave cream....when I did this years ago I was told to use Colgate...I have no idea why but the generic above left seemed to work fine. You'll also need a large, shallow tray. You can see Denny has filled her tray almost to the top and is spreading it around. This part feels really good and gushy...really makes you feel like a kid again.

 Someone brought shave cream with gel which didn't work well but good to find that out.

 You'll also need textile paint or a craft paint and textile medium to add to to. There is no batching, although probably good to let it set a while. I brought Createx air brush colors which I use for marbling and have good success. Dye-na-Flow or Jacquard paints work well also. Gen's big box of paints she received for Christmas one year is enviable.

Paints were dropped on the surface...you can see the thinner ones tended to expand a little more.

  Using various kinds of stylus's, patterns were created on top.

Sue's husband Wally who is so handy (and built all the shelving units in her huge studio) made one of these for each of us...They were great and created the kind of patterning you see on the right.

 Susan created this lovely piece using a stencil.

Here is Denny doing her usual experimenting, always opening up doors for new ways to do things. Some more stenciled pieces featured.

These have become Denny's trademark, cutting out silhouettes in magazines to use as a mask or printing tool. I think they are so unique and so Denny.

 So our clever Gen brought some Lumiere paint which is my favorite - very thick and metallic with great results.

 

and painted 

globs of paint on a piece of glass (left), took another piece of glass to lay on top to create the veining (right) and then printed it off by laying

 a piece of paper (Gen likes printed papers for more interest) on top OR

 a piece of fabric...both great results!

  A productive day...

and our 2 sweet doggies who loved being with us and guarding our work.

 So the results....I couldn't get to washing them out for weeks...holiday busy stuff so just got to it. For me, some work and some do not. I think because the fabric is laying on paint which is laying on shave cream, there is not as much permeation of the paint into fabric. The sheers seem to be more successful which makes sense - sheers will absorb faster as they are thinner and don't require as much paint. But subtle is okay too, makes a nice backdrop or filler...

So would I do this again...maybe....a little more experimenting might be in the cards.

Eco Printing Pt. 3

In lieu of what happened last time (previous post), I decided to try different shingles to see if the black on the print might have had something to do with the shingles. I went to Home Depot and bought a bundle, brought them home and dove in.

My husband is a woodworker and has lots of tools..many of which I've become very comfortable with using. This table saw is big and loud, but does a quick and accurate job of cutting the shingles to size.

It's hard to tell, but the thickness is different from end to end as you can see...

 here...so to make it easy for clamping I will have to clamp the sandwich flip-flop the thick and thin ends together.

I used a print to calculate size...sets for 8 x 10s, sets for 5 x 7s and one for bookmarks..

The old ones which are warped still work but am anxious to try the new ones.

I also wanted to try some handmade paper to print on.

Here are some before and afters...befores on top, afters on bottom.

The Maple on the left did not print well...looks like the water did not permeate parts of the leaf...still getting black areas and I don't know why.

Another set of before and afters...None of them were permeated with water bath enough...these are usually in the middle and probably clamped too tightly.

Okay...so far, I'm not thrilled and eco printing is often like that...just have no idea what you're going to get.

On some of these, I'll go back and print over them...and some that are not totally printed but just a faint image in parts can also be pretty on their own.

I used Kilimanjaro 130 llb watercolor paper from Cheap Joes (their store brand) and it works very well. The paper runs 22" x 30" with 2 deckled edges. I use a deckle edge ruler to do all 4 edges. It's a little more work but looks nice. Sometimes (like one above on right), I also burn the edge with a woodburning tool.

Here is an example of how I printed over a "not so great" print....think it looks interesting.

If you can find large leaf Eucalyptus, go for it...by far the best for printing. All I've been able to get lately is the small leaf.

Here's what's so fun about using a heavier paper, the mirror ghost image. You get the one image that has direct contact with the leaf (right) and the back side of the neighboring paper with a mirror image. Sometimes both sides of the same paper are good and a hard decision as to which side to use.

The leaves on the left are Sumac...we have none on our property but some along a little country road near us...so my husband drives, I jump out of the car and clip, clip real fast and hop back in...Sumac prints really well. 

The Maples print very well...

and above, overprints which I think turned out fine....and nice to be able to save a card.

Rose leaves and Maples....next time even more experimenting.