Technique of the Week #8 – Golden Acrylics Paints and Mediums
Project hours: About 8 hours Design and materials: about 4
Execution: 4 hours
I took a Golden Acrylics paint class with an accredited Golden Acrylics teacher to learn how to use their materials in fabric projects. I was surprised at the variety of the mediums they offer. I have used gel matte and gloss mediums before, but I had never used pastes and some of their other products before.
Our teacher showed us how to use the paints on a wet or dry surface, using GAC-100 as a resist, using moulding pastes through pieces of lace and many many other cool things.
Shown here are two pieces from my class. The background was made by using GAC-100 in dots that acted as a resist when dry. Then the rest of the piece was dry painted using a paper towel and regular fluid paints. They blended nicely in the center. The middle piece, which did not scan well, is a “skin” made from layers of heavy gloss gel medium and some sparkly gauzy scraps in similar colors.
I included my education in the above time-frame, and drying time in the execution hours.
In other news, I’m working on workshop proposals, an article submission proposal, and a lecture to shop around to local guilds. And there’s 500 ish flowers to be made for my sister’s wedding! Fun year planned ahead!
Recycled Weekly Quilts
Here are the last two week’s “recycled” themed quilts. Sorry they are late being posted online, but I was having SOOO much fun at IQA, I didn’t have time.
This quilt is made from Ramen noodle wrappers. I don’t really think about packaging much, but when you are trying to reduce your carbon and plastic footprints, things like these mundane wrappers do contribute. I don’t think to ever recycle the plastic on wrappers like these. These slippery devils are applied to a kunin felt batting. They bubbled up a bit, but I kinda like that.
This week’s quilt is made from my program from IQA. I had such an amazing time, and I have lots of memories, but one more program is one less thing I need to keep around. So I made this quilt out of the things I liked from the program. I intentionally did not use any quilt imagery from the program as that artwork is copyrighted by the artists whose quilts are shown. The one non-program thing is the little hippo drawind I sketched on a piece of mail after talking with Melanie Testa. The hippo represents the friends I made at the show and whom I shared the show with while I was there.
I have an idea in mind for next week’s hope it comes together as I expect.
Ephemera- Another Recycling Theme!
I love the concept of recycling in art projects, things that would be trash becoming something beautiful. Even moreso, I love “ephemera”. Ephemera is material not intended to be retained or preserved. Vintage ephemera could be advertisments, candy wrappers, empty soda or beer cans, and so forth. More recently it’s greeting cards, comic books, trading cards, and the like. Some ephemera is valuable, like comic books or other collectibles.
I’m of the “keep everything to remind me of things later” types. I keep cards and letters well past any meaning they may have held. If I have a memorable moment, I keep something from it; a ticket stub, a flier, a receipt, or shopping bag.
This month’s theme is a recycling effort to use up some of the goofy ephemera I have been keeping for a project like this. I hope you like them.
This week’s is scraps of Japanese newspaper that I got as packing material from one of my Japan purchases. Newspaper is not meant to be saved, per se. Especially newspaper that is used as packing material. But I love this stuff, and carefully fold the sheets I get from their crumpled up state in my boxes from Japan.
My painting, well, I’m happy and not happy with it. First of all, this is about as close to my true art style as you will see without me posting sketches. I’m not that great an artist, figure drawing or painting-wise. But these little eco-characters were in my sketchbook, and I thought I could use them effectively for this theme. My husband likes the “happy little dirt” in the lower left.