Wednesday, March 28, 2012

quilts

Hello, my friends.  Over in the OWSE Yahoo Group, we have an art journaling club that meets in the chat room.  Last week Robyn asked for a volunteer to come up with a technique idea, and silly me... guess who volunteered.  Yup!  That's right.  ME!  Crazy me!  Especially considering how new I am to art journaling.  But, I figured since I teach a card technique class every month, I should be able to come up with something.  And no one else was raising their hand! lol

Well, needless to say, it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be.  First I tried a spray starch resist, but that wasn't working as well on my gesso'd watercolor paper as it does on glossy card stock.  So, on to plan B.

I love texture and have a lot of thread, so I thought there must be a way to add thread to my page and get a fun texture.  My first attempt -- I used gel medium, which essentially worked, but took forever to dry.  I had to leave it overnight, and I wanted to work on it NOW - not tomorrow!  From that attempt, I also learned that less is better than more.  I put way too much thread on and it really didn't give me the look I wanted.  I also did one page with little snips of thread (1" or less), but I really didn't like the look of that either until I covered it with paint. 

My second attempt -- I used matte Mod Podge.  Much, much better.  So, here's what I did.

First, I cut a piece of tissue paper slightly larger than my page, crumbled it up, and then flattened it out, leaving some wrinkles, and set it aside.

Next, using a foam brush, I brushed the page with a light coat of Mod Podge.

Then I dropped pieces of thread, anywhere from 6" to 12" or so, onto the wet page.  Using both my fingers and the foam brush, I pressed the thread down onto the paper.

Then, I place the wrinkled tissue paper over the page and pressed it down really well with my hands (palms work best).

When I was satisfied, I brushed on another light coating of the Mod Podge and set it aside to dry.

You can leave it this way and build your page, allowing all the colors of thread to show through the tissue (which is a very fun look), OR... you can do what I did and brush a very thin coat of acrylic paint over it.  I can still see the threads, but the individual colors no longer stand out.

To complete my pages, I die cut letters from black card stock for the title.

The quilt is actually fabric, mod podged to card stock and then glued to the page.

I printed the sentiment on my computer, cut it apart and sponged the edges with pacific point ink, which I also used on the page edges.

The spools of thread are die cut with Tim Holtz dies.  I then inked them with tea dye distress ink by dragging the ink pad over the card stock.  Then I embossed with a woodgrain embossing folder, and inked the raised parts with vintage photo distress ink.  Because I really didn't want the texture, I put them back in my cuttlebug and ran them through again to flatten them out.  I used some embroidery floss wrapped around the spools for thread.  Because the floss actually adds thickness, I added some small pieces of cereal box chipboard on the back of the spools where there is no thread, so they would glue on better.

Finally, I added some faux stitching aroune the edges of the page and around the quilt.  I really, really love how this spread turned out.  I'm sure that's mostly because quilts are such an important part of my life and I put a part of me in each one I make.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I hope you try my embedded thread technique and I hope you have some quilts in your life.

2 comments:

Papernut said...

Thanks so much for the tutorial at OWSE Melody! Your blog is wonderful. I am having a great time browsing thru it! Sande

Starla said...

This is GENIUS!! I would love to see the texture in real life! (filing for future use!)