more fabric play......

Let's see, where did I leave off????
Oh yes, we rust dyed our fabrics and then we were playing with creating our own stamps to use on our fabrics.  We used all manner of things to make our stamps.....
Cathi used some sort of discarded kitchen utensil for this one. Hmmmm, Cathi, won't you miss that in the kitchen???? LOL Then she over-stamped it with a small commercially made texture stamp. This turned out very cool, I also like the way the brush strokes still show up from painting the stamp surface with the fabric paint.

Cathi's stamp work

Cathi also made this stamping using two different stamps and two colors, one stamp was made with assorted washers and the other was the toothpick stamp. Stunning!

Cathi's double stamp fabric

Karen made her stamp using assorted washers and created a tone-on-tone look by using a

subtle, neutral fabric paint.

Karen's stamped piece - step 1

 Karen then over-stamped it using a metallic paint achieving a dimensional effect...

Karen's stamped piece - step 2

Here is Marti's stamped piece showing the two distinct stamp designs and colors she used.

I love the paper clip stamp. This was so much fun!

Marti's double stamped fabric

This is my stamped piece that I did using a stamp made with metal bobbins....

I stamped onto a white-on-white print fabric and then over-stamped it with a 

commercially made dot texture stamp.

Linda's stamped fabric

Karen enjoys calligraphy and so she was drawn to this commercially made 

stamp, and I can see why....

Unfortunately, Marti was going to have to leave early and our day was ticking away......

 So we moved on to surface design using stencils and rubbing plates but more on that next time....

Transformation.....

A Monarch caterpillar decide that this wall plaque on our patio, was where it wanted to make it's amazing transformation. We came out one morning and this lovely chrysalis was hanging form the edge of the wall plaque. 

several days later it was changing........

then we came home the next afternoon and .....

we had missed it..... but one of the monarch butterflies fluttering about our yard started it's flight right here.

rust never sleeps......

Hooray - Cathi just sent me her pix of her rust dyeing and she got some really cool results.
Tell me this one doesn't look like C3PO from star wars......

Cathi's C3PO?

I like these two a lot too......

Cathi got some good rust going here

Cathi's rust dyeing - to me, this one looks like fossils of long legged bugs.

Hopefully someday we will all do something with our rust dyed pieces -  right girls? LOL
 But if not, we had fun with it.
The next technique on the days agenda was stamping designs onto fabric. The really cool part was making the stamps. Cathi found these with these really cool foam blocks that you can create your own stamps with. They are called Magic Stamp by Pen Score.  You warm them about 30 seconds with a heat gun and then press them onto found objects to create stamps. If you don't like the design you just heat it up and try again.
This was a lot of fun......

Marti's stamps.... paperclips and asst. washers etc.

Karen at creative play......wearing her thrift store "smock"

Linda's toothpick stamp on a commercial fabric

I'll show you the results of this creative play in my next post. Sorry, but right now I am itching to head into the studio... or go to bed ??????   decisions, decisions.........