WIP - Birds, Texture and Embroidery

Eight bird collages.

The backing paper was some waste paper from another project, from that long ago I can't remember the project. I  like the pictures but I think they would look better with machine embroidery which I may do eventually.

This is a sheet of watercolour paper to which I have applied some raised letters by using olden course molding paste and a plastic stencil. Then sprayed with a couple of different colours of ink. What to do next? Draw? More paint effects? Collage?

This is my whitework embroidery coming along. There is a LOT of stitching on this.

WIP - Textured Art Quilt

Another small A4 art quilt with a landscape them.

I textured the fabric with Golden course molding paste and bits from a page of a book. Colour was added with inktense blocks. I quilted it with bamboo wadding and backing fabric and stitched some basic lines on the hills and around the trees on a sewing machine. It needs a lot more quilting but will my sewing machine like going through the paste for any length of time.

1st experiment with Coarse Molding Paste

I was eager to start my first experiment with Golden coarse molding paste but couldn't find the evolon or lutradur that I wanted to try it on [found it later] so I used a [new] Sarah Smith microfibre cleaning cloth [which I thought felt like a similar fabric & it was just waiting to be used!]. I painted the paste on with a brush together with golden fluid acrylics, when it was dry it felt a bit like sandpaper. The fabric looked a bit dark on it's own so I decided on the white flowers. As I wanted a crackle glazed effect for the flowers I decided to paint them in emulsion and then add a coat of crackle glaze, however this didn't work [maybe because it was fabric & not a hard surface, maybe because I should have put a base layer of medium or gesso under the emulsion, maybe because my crackle glaze isn't very good...]

The flowers looked a bit shiny because of the glaze so I painted over them with watercolour paints. I then stitched the veining and the french knots in the centre. I was surprised that it was really easy to stitch through even with the molding paste. After I finished the sewing I put some wadding on the back & wrapped it around a canvas frame.

A tip  - on the 3rd picture you will see a rectangular mark around the design [where it would bend round on the canvas] - this was made with a coloured watercolour crayon & can be rubbed out with a damp brush afterwards. It is useful for drawing on a design too, but check how it works before doing it on anything important.