Paper Towel Purse

I’m back in the studio making things that have little practical purpose, but having fun in the process. I’ve been making samples for the fabric painting workshop I’ll be doing with teens in a few weeks. When I get out my paints I have a multi-step process to cleaning brushes.

1. Paint off all excess paint onto sheets of paper.  I save the paper sheets for future projects.

2. Squeeze out any remaining paint with paper towels.

3. Swab the brush in a bucket of brush cleaner. I use The Masters brush cleaner. I have been using the same tub for over a year, and I’m generous with it. It looks like it will last another year or two. Again use a paper towel to squeeze out the soap and paint

4. Finally rinse in a bucket or under running water. Very little paint goes down my drain. I’d rather throw paper towels in the landfill than pour wet paint into the water system.

The end result is that I get a lot of painted paper towels. I usually let them dry and throw them out, but one from last night caught my eye. Today, I bonded the paper towel to a piece of fabric using this technique as described in Kelli Nina Perkins book Stitch Alchemy. 

The towel was a little bare in some places, so I added a few drops of blue ink and let it dry in the sun.  I made a very simple clutch purse, boxed the corners and added a button and ribbon closure with beads. I bought nothing for this project and didn’t take a lot time thinking about what color button, beads, thread, etc.

What will I do with it? Keep it awhile and admire it. It’s only about 4”x5”, so I’m being generous to call it a purse.

Switching Gears

I recently made a list of things I wanted to accomplish in the studio. Some things are wet work, others strictly sewing machine and ironing board. Today I did some prep work with adhering paper to fabric.

I reworked some pieces that I didn’t like and made a couple of new ones in preparation for making more Christmas garlands, like this.

I’m thinking of making some of them vertical. I have some time to think about it because the next step is painting the paper and adding embellishments.

As soon as I get my studio cleaned up, and make sure my iron is ready to work with fabric, I’ll begin work on some placemats for Chez Clayton.

Valentines for my family

For at least 20 years, my husband, daughters and I have exchanged home made valentines. They are all far more clever with words than I am, so I have to compensate with art or sewing skills. For this year’s valentines I bought three decks of cards, pulled out the hearts and jokers and began embellishing. I had made a big piece of stitch paper which I cut and glued to chipboard, and that became the front and back covers. I then put stickers with sentiments on the hearts and bound them all together with a ring.

Since Tom makes my lunch most days after playing tennis…

He is an enabler of my art addiction…

Signature page

Back cover

I didn’t get photos of the ones for my daughters before I sent them out, but they were the same style with different sentiments.

Over the years we have had some great valentines, it is an event we all look forward to.

This fantastic idea came from Heather at Dollar Store Crafts

Creative process part 2

I took one of the mono prints applied fusible web to the back and cut it into twelve 3 inch squares. I then shuffled the squares and affixed them to black fabric

The quilt on the left is the original one, now painted with metallic paints, and the one on the right is the new piece. Since the original quilt had ginkgo leaves on it, (and no focal point) I think I’m going to appliqué a ginko leaf to it. I don’t have any fabric the color I want, so for now I have cut a paper piece as a guide. I am painting some tissue paper and some stitch paper, one of which I will appliqué to the quilt.

And I almost always paint my journal pages with left over paint.

Finished!

Before we went to Israel, I cleaned out my studio and set aside some projects to finish or discard after our return. Today is the first concentrated time I have had since our return, and I got a lot done. One of my accomplishments was finishing the binding on this paper stitch project I made many years ago. The daylily parts were from a Phil Beaver workshop I took in French Lick, Indiana about six years ago. We learned how to paint the fabric and I cut out the petals and shaded them. For three years I just had the parts of the daylily. Three years later when my fiber arts group issued a monthly challenge for quilt in a complementary color scheme, I made the stitch paper background and fused the petals to the background. I quilted it, but never bound it. Today, I finished it! It is ready to hang.

Close-up stitch paper garland

I tried some close-ups of the stitch paper garland today, and here are the results.

The process I used was:

1.Make stitch paper using Christmas music and paint with metallic paint and gloss glazing liquid

2. Cut out two shapes for each ornament and stencil with white paint

3. Emboss using clear embossing powder. I used clear as the stitch paper is somewhat tacky and extra embossing powder sticks to it. The clear embossing powder doesn’t show like colors do.

4. Embellish stenciling with extra lines with Pitt extra fine pen, and paint writers

5. Add beads and sequins (the beads and sequins made it hard to stitch in the next step, might just glue them on after final step)

6. Sandwich ribbon between matching ornaments and zigzag all around. Using paper clips helped to hold the two ornaments together while stitching.

7. Touch up stitching with gold metallic paint

8. Finish ends of ribbon for hanging

Stitch Paper Christmas garland

I’ve been busy making a Christmas garland with my new addiction, stitch paper, a fusion of fabric, paper and glue. This garland is a prototype, so I have learned a lot about how this medium behaves and the best way to stitch and assemble.

The underlying paper is from so old hymnals. I cut out the Christmas songs and glued them to fabric, then painted and embellished. Lots of fun!

First stitch paper project

I meet once a month with a bunch of wonderful fiber and mixed media artists, and we are challenged each month to make a project based on a theme. October's theme is "Fright Night". I started to think about what a "Fright Night" is for me and how to use the stitch paper techniques I have been playing with for the last three weeks.

Long ago, I had a lapse in my formal education. My family moved when I started the third grade and I went to the school in our new neighborhood. We had a teacher for about the first six weeks, then she left, and we never had another regular teacher again. My mother says there was a long string of substitutes including the school custodian and parents willing to come in and help out. Consequently, I didn't learn much that year. My parents then sent me to a private school for fourth, fifth and part of sixth grade. I loved this school. There were only about 50 students in the whole school, first grade through twelfth. So there was a lot of mingling. I must have had some regular classes with my grade, but I remember sitting in on a lot of high school English and History classes. I was behind in math, having missed out on multiplication and division the previous year, so I just didn't go to math class. For some reason, no one seemed to mind.

In the middle of sixth grade my parents realized that my sister and I were not getting the education they were paying for. We transferred to a school in our old neighborhood, and I was happy because I was around all my old friends again. However, I was woefully behind in math. I had multiplication and division tables to learn, the concept of the decimal point, fractions, long division, story problems. I developed a bad case of math anxiety. Eventually I caught up, but I never got over the fear of math tests. My interpretation of Fright Night; it's the night before the trig test. The ghost is made of stitch paper using pages from a trigonometry textbook.

addicted to making stitch paper

This may show up on a family valentine next year.

For this piece of stitch paper, I added color as I glued the papers to the fabric. I ran out of glue today, but I'll be back in business tomorrow. I need a bunch of sheets completed by the time we start week 2 of the book study. I'll do more to this piece as I am inspired.

more stitch paper

This one was made with a world map, security envelopes and assorted tissue papers

This one was made with raffia, pattern tissue and tea bag papers. Can't wait to see how this looks when paint is added.

stitch paper

Today I cleaned my studio enough to play with fabric, papers and glue. I’ve joined mixed media art friends on Yahoo, and we are doing a book study of Kelli Nina Perkins book, Stitch Alchemy.

I made four sheets of the basic paper, and put them out on the porch to dry. Next week we will paint them. Can’t wait. I may have to make some more between now and then so I’ll have plenty to play with. These sheets are about 15”x20”.

For this one I used security envelopes, pattern tissue, church bulletin, origami paper and a French dictionary.

This was the lining from a greeting card envelope, tissue paper and some dictionary text and pattern tissue