Lutradur book

I decided to use lutradur to create a quick folded book.I also had an uncharacteristic romantic moment!

I painted some lutradur with crimson fluid acrylic paint. Once dry, I stamped all over it with white gesso, and left that to dry. I then gave a coat of nickel azo yellow fluid acrylic to tone it down a little and blend the stamped gesso into the background. I folded the lutradur in half lengthways, then in half, then folded the halves back on themselves. I slit the lutradur down the between the middle two sets of 'pages'. That's probably as clear as mud but you can work it out from the picture below!


I painted some Crafty Individuals images with matte gel medium to dull down the shine and give a kind of 'canvas' effect, then glued them onto the lutradur with more gel medium. I took some more lutradur, printed it with the same colours, then laid it onto a ceramic tile and used a versamark tool with soldering tip to 'cut' it into strips with wiggly edges. I sewed these strips around the pictures to make 'frames'. After gluing a few heart shaped sequins on, and punching two holes and threading fibres through to hold the book together, I just glued the pages together for a bit of strength. Voila, a quick folded book!





For the cover, I made a cupid using air dry clay and a mould. I painted it with white gesso, then the same crimson paint I'd used on the lutradur. Once dry, I rubbed it all over with Treasure Gold in 'ruby' and just touched the high points with Treasure Gold in 'whitefire'.


I hope Claudia likes it!

I am playing with Lutradur

No pictures yet, but I can tell you that colouring Lutradur with watered down Golden fluid acrylics works very well. Adding a second colour after the first has dried adds depth.

Stamping with gesso after colouring looks lovely. I'll post pics and a 'how to' for my project when it's finished!

Bookmark

I am in a bookmark swap and have been pondering about how to make the bookmark - too many choices - paper, fabric, pelmet vilene, grungepaper, fabric paper....

Eventually I decided to try making some fabric paper using Pattie's method. Pattie starts with a layer of organza fabric, which will become the top layer once the fabric paper's made. I then used pva glue and water (50/50) to stick my scraps of printed tissue down, with the images facing downwards, then layered crumpled tissue paper all over the top, added more glue, then painted with watered down Lumieres and Golden fluid acrylic paints. The finished paper was much thinner and more delicate than the fabric paper I've made before, and the organza layer makes it a little shimmery. On the whole, I prefer the fabric paper I usually make, but there are occasions when this will be more suitable for projects, so I'm glad I tried it out.


You can enlarge the image by clicking on it.

I layered two pieces of fabric paper with felt, and machine stitched the edges. I added Stewart Gill paint to a wooden paisley fabric stamp using a colorbox sponge tool, then printed the fabric on both sides. The pale gold colour makes it look very luxurious. I machine stitched some sari ribbon down the middle of the front, and hand sewed two Prima flowers on, using sequins and seed beads to hold them in place. Finally, I hand sewed some sheer gold striped ribbon down the back to cover the stitching from sewing the ribbon down the front!

I hope my swap partner likes it.

Friendly Plastic wall art

I signed up for a Friendly Plastic swap on CCSwaps. I decided to create a piece of wall art, so began with a 6 inch square stretched canvas. I drew some curvy lines in pencil, and painted dots of Xpandaprint between the lines (see left of pic below) then heated it with my heat gun to make it bubble up. I painted fine garnet gel around the Xpandaprint, and between the lines (see right of picture below).


Next, I painted the areas between the fine garnet gel and the canvas edges with coarse garnet gel.


I used a palette knife to add some gold mica flakes to the inner edges of the curvy lines.


When the garnet gels and mica flakes had dried, I filled the space between with clear granular gel (below).


I add some clear tar gel to the edges of some areas, then painted the fine garnet gel with Golden iridescent bronze fluid acrylic, and the coarse garnet gel with Golden fine iridescent gold. These colours will not show in the final piece, but they will add a sort of glow to the final colour.


Once the clear granular gel was dry, I added more dribbles of clear tar gel, and when that dried, I painted the whole piece with watered down Golden raw umber fluid acrylic paint. I then took some of the paint off with a damp paintbrush.


Once the canvas was dry, I added some aqua Treasure Gold to the clear tar gel and the central texture panel. It is a little brighter than the picture below shows, there is more contrast between the aqua and the background colour.


Finally, I dusted a Krafty Lady lizard mould with PearlEx, and made a lizards by melting gold coloured Friendly Plastic pieces into the mould. I pressed the melted plastic into the mould firmly with wet fingers (don't try it with dry fingers, it will stick to you and burn!) and kept wetting my fingers and pressing the plastic into the mould until I was happy that all the detail would be visible on the moulded piece. I dropped the mould and Friendly Plastic into the water, left it for a few moments, then unmoulded it under the water. I made a second lizard and toned the colour of the lizards down a little with aqua Treasure Gold.

Finally, I adhered the lizards to the canvas with gel medium. I hope Trish likes it!