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! 

King Tut & Garage Sales

The King Tut items were on display at “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” in the Discovery Times Square Exposition.  Having always been enthralled with the mystique of the Egyptian tombs — I HAD to go.  After seeing a partial and wonderful display at the provincial museum in Victoria, I went prepared to spend time soaking it all in.  It was fabulous.  (New York is its last stop before the artifacts return to Egypt in January.)  I felt blessed to be able to see more!  The average time to go through the display is estimated at 90 minutes.  I took three hours.  Of course there I was making notes and sketches for future projects, taking down details and just generally studying everything.  And then, going through the souvenir shop, I bought the book!

A girl who was travelling at the same speed as me started speaking with me (altho the general mood is one of silent awe) and she told me she'd been to Egypt and seen the actual pyramids, and many other details, adding exponentially to what we were looking at.  She made me giggle amid the silence when she said "they thought the scarab, a dung beetle, was the beginning of life.  I don't really want to believe that I descended from a dung beetle, but they do look artistic don't they?"  Several pieces of jewelery on display were absolutely stunning when you consider how primitive their tools supposedly were!

I particularly enjoyed this exhibit.  A "funny story".  Several years ago, my sister-in-law and I held a garage sale.  We cleaned out my sewing room, our kitchens, our book shelves, our garages and our crawl spaces.  We advertised.  We set everything up in the garage and advertised in the local paper.  The morning of the sale arrived and we were out there bright and early.  The garage door went up and there were at least five cars parked in the street already!  Things moved so fast after that we hardly had a chance to catch our breath. 

We had agreed that we would put all our profits together and take our partners with us to Victoria to see the Egyptian display at the BC Museum.  Between her awesome collection of pocketbooks, and her knowledge of who wrote them and which series they were part of, and my quilting and needlework supplies, we did very well.  So, a couple of weeks later, off we went to Victoria.  We wandered around downtown, had a great dinner, stayed in a motel where we visited together, and the next day had breakfast at the Empress Hotel, all on the funds we had earned at the garage sale! 

After breakfast we went to the Museum, where we waited in line for quite some time, winding back and forth and down the hall before we got into the actual display.  Needless to say, our husbands were less than enthusiastic by this point, mine in particular.  He had HIS dog in the car and didn't like him being alone this long, let alone the time it would take to see the display.  When we got in, it was dark, quiet, and we had the headphones to listen to the details about the displays.  Needless to say, I lost him within five minutes.  I suspected he had sped through the displays and went back to his dog.  At first I felt I should worry about him and look for him, but I decided no, I was going to enjoy this as it was likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  (I had no clue I would be lucky enough to see more in New York City!)  So I did the same thing threre.....read every plaque, listened to each description, sometimes more than once, made some sketches, and generally took my time to absorb it all. 

When I came out, hubby was indeed outside walking the dog.  I accused him of roaring through to get back to his dog and...... he denied it.  I asked a couple of questions about what he saw and what were his favorite things.  He gave answers that showed he'd seen something but not much detail.  It was a long quiet ride home!  So he and his dog still enjoy themselves together while I travel with girlfriends or alone, and thus I truly enjoyed this opportunity in New York to see such splendorous objects with NO pressure to hurry!