Liquitex Playtime on a Rainy Day

Rain.  More Rain.  We've had enough Rain!  But there's a pleasant side effect.  Even here on the coast where we are supposed to be used to rain, we get tired of it....and then we stay inside and do something else that pleases us.  My house is clean, the floors are washed, I baked, and then decided I'd do something in my studio. 

I perused the situation in there.....had a look at a number of different projects on the go.  Several quilts ready to be quilted, but I didn't feel like getting the table cleared and set up for quilting.  One project on the design wall, which is arguing with me so I didn't want to tackle that one.  Some dolls I could finish.  Some mending to do.  Some hand stitching to do.  And amongst all these started projects I couldn't find anything I wanted to do so I started something new!  Well....it's better than retail therapy isn't it? 

So I decided on a journal page.  8 1/2 x 11 for size.  I've had an idea percolating at the back of my mind after seeing all the eclectic funky houses in my Mum & Dad's neighborhood (see my post of March 2, 2011).  I thought why not do a small version of it and see how it works.  Well....it wasn't long before I was buried in scraps and having scads of fun with my machine. 

I had a piece of fabric that I scrunched up, dampened and painted with Liquitex Inks.  The experiment was to see how much differently/the same it worked like fabric paint.  Here are some photos of the results.  It seems it worked very much like fabric paint in this method. 

This piece seemed like a good choice for the background as I wanted to portray bright sunny skies but with lots of snow and ice on the ground.  I used it so that the darker green areas got covered and the white/pink/light blue areas showed.  It has a little bit of Liquitex pearlescent medium in parts, and I hoped that would be the sparkle off the snow. 

Next to the houses.  I used only scraps and most of them in the shape they were already, just trimming here and there.  These were glued down on the background with a bit of UHU glue stick (I'm not a fan of fusing).  From there I proceeded to stitch the pieces down with satin stitch.  It wasn't long before I was trying out the variety of stitches my little machine offers as embellishment.  Here are the results so far.  I should iron things before I photograph them!


I have another piece of fabric done while I was playing around with the Liquitex Inks.  This one was a "mono print".  The inks, thickened a bit with the opalescent medium, were painted onto a big ceramic tile.  When I was pleased with the arrangement of the colors, I put a dry piece of pfd cotton on it and rolled it with a little brayer.  It was left sitting there for about 5 minutes and then lifted.  Here is what came of that experiment: 

I plan to cut this piece and use the brownish red piece on the bottom to add a "sidewalk" to the bottom of my little "cityscape", and then will quilt the little journal page.  When that's done,  I will do a bit of hand embellishing with beads and buttons and whatever else I can find.    All in all, great fun on a rainy day!