Monday 7 October 2024

2024 Topic 8 : White {by Floss Nicholls}


Hi everyone, it's Floss with you here today.  

I knew as soon as the WHITE topic was announced that it would be one that would really challenge me! I usually like to cover all my surfaces in colour and textures...or both including the edges and so I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could keep things white or make things white...here's how I got on...


Now this may not look too white to you but I'll try and justify my 'whiteness' as I talk you through my thinking behind these flowers...



I have a real 'thing' about creating art with flowers in vases and so I took comfort in that I had these wonderful supplies by JOFY to help me get started.  You can see one of my favourite stencils PS396 poking out, which I admit is still covered in paint from a previous project...but that actually helped me make some choices a bit later on hence the addition of twilight and bougainvillea in the photo!


So the first thing I did was stamp a range of flowers from PaperArtsy stamp set JOFY114 onto some packaging paper and some white fabric using Rangers black Archival Ink.


Keeping the theme of white and using one of my signature go-to techniques, I free motion stitched over the lines from the Jofy114 stamp using a 70 needle, my open toe foot and white thread. 


I stitched a few with the white linen fabric on the surface and a couple with the brown parcel paper on the surface.  The two layers gave the surface stability; the fabric under the paper certainly helped with the paper not tearing.


The stitching can also be done by hand if you don't have a sewing machine...or are not quite ready to free motion stitch.  I tested a small hand stitched area here and would suggest small stitches to get the result of the ripping tearing edges used later.  I used the sewing not only to add texture to the lines but to add more white back in. 



Ripping the edges of the brown packaging paper near the stitching helped me keep to the boundaries.  I did not want a uniform cut edge or an equal edge as I wanted the flowers to look more organic. I painted PaperArtsy Fresco finish Cloud 9 onto the petal area using a flat brush but left the outer edges soft and unfinished.  I chose cloud 9 as it is a softer less stark white and thought it suited the brown parcel paper better.


Because the linen was quite a bright white I needed to use a sharp white to keep the whites apparent and so chose the fresco finish SNOWFLAKE and painted the linen flower in the same way.  Because of the stitching within the petals the paint laid slightly thicker in places which was intentional to create depth in texture.


I could not resist a little trial of stencilling another flower using the Fresco Finish CLOUD 9 onto the packaging paper with Jofy's PaperArtsy stencil PS057 to give me more options. I also liked the swirly image on the same stencil and so decided to emboss that onto the brown paper and put that to one side for later. I rough cut the linen flowers, frayed their edges slightly and loosely tore the under paper.


My next decision was how to do the background (testing me to keep the WHITE!!) and decorate a jug vase.  I'd recently played with weaving paper when I was starting to think about the content of this blog so I started looking at suitable gel printed background papers to incorporate.  I chose the subtle white purple one and the lightest area in the blue paper.  I also painted some brown packaging paper.  I used Cloud 9 to do this and as you can see I used a soft arc to enhance what would become the contours of the vase.


I drew around the jug I had previously made using my Pilot Frixion pen, used some washi tape to hold the two layers together and cut them out. 


Drawing lines down the length of one jug following the curve and across the width of other jug would allow me to weave a pattern and allow the jug to appear rounded. I spaced the lines unevenly for a pattern. 


Starting the weave is the tricky part.  What I found the easiest was to separate the bottom of the jug handle from it's body and cut the width lines completely across on the coloured jug, but leaving the lip of the jug connected with the vertical lines and cutting the handle off the painted parcel paper jug.



Firstly gluing only the lips of the jug and the handle down onto another piece of paper I started weaving the jug securing it with each weave layer with gel medium. You can see I used different patterns on each.


OK...so my big dilemma...the background!! I played and dithered over what to do and drank several cups of tea whilst doing so! I glued music paper onto white card stock and scraped gesso on it to diffuse the notes to appear more white, I scraped gesso straight onto card stock through stencils PS166 and PS396 ...so white on white giving me a slight raised texture but when I offered up the PS396 stencil behind the jug I was inspired by how the contrast of the the purple paint sat on the edge of the jug.  Inconveniently, I had run out of that colour, which I think was byzantium and so I slowly mixed a little twilight into some bougainvillea acrylic paint until I matched the colour.


I sponged an area of the acrylic where the colour would poke out from behind the jug onto heavy watercolour paper and let it dry before stencilling the crossed flowers in stencil PS396 with gesso and let that dry too.  Using a light layer of the mixed paint over the dark areas and almost letting that dry before wiping it gently with a baby wipe allowed the white of the gesso to be revealed and put coloured texture into the gesso at the same time. Using the wet wipe that now had paint on it gave a more subtle shade that highlighted the unpainted area of where i had applied the gesso.


I wasn't keen on the width of the page so I tore the side off and stitched it back on closer so that I was able to keep the organic edges of the paint rather than what would have been a solid line of colour.


The little squiggly line from earlier using Jofy's PS057 stencil gave me what I needed to do with the flower stems. Stitching them wouldn't have given me the look I wanted here and so I used an embossing pen to draw a line and embossed that using WOW opaque vanilla white.  I then tore either side of the embossing and glued all the pieces in position.



Jofy's flowers in the style of Floss :) 



Naturally I have lots of things I tried and tested along the way so I now have plenty of left overs to play with for different versions of this project...


...including the very white background of diamonds...but this one will warrant stitched stems, I think it will help balance the white!


...and maybe some bright green stems over the music paper.



I hope this may have whet your appetite for something creative...whether it's fully embracing  this project, trying to keep things whiter or using any element of it...either way, have fun and enjoy your creative time...

Kindest wishes
Floss x




Floss teaches in person mixed media workshops in East Sussex...you can check out what she has available here...


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Friday 4 October 2024

2024 Topic 8 : White {by Ellie Knol}



Hi everyone

Ellie Knol from PAPER-STAMPS-COLOR here with you today.

This topic WHITE had me thinking about using a lot of white paint from the Fresco Chalk Acrylic Paints !

I also wrote down a range of ideas; not only the type of project, but also the products, and techniques I could incorporate. 

I'm looking forward to sharing with you today my experiments making fabric paper from tissue paper; adding pieces of lace, gauze, leftover die-cuts.  Have a look how it worked out: I assumed the decoupage glue would offer a sturdy base to form "lace-paper".

There's more to discover: grunge paste on tissue paper for instance... 


To describe this project in a few words it would be Grungy Fragile Nature  Art... 
FRAGILE dried flowers, NATURE stamps and the ART to put that together!

To create with just WHITE is a challenge to me; it's always a struggle to NOT use color. I need colorrrrrr... lol How about you?

Read on to see how I worked around that.... 



The two stamp sets are from Sara Naumann; Set 35 (ESN35) and Set 55 (ESN55).
I know these two stamp sets will be great when using lots of white, and the type of project I envisioned to make.


I decided on embroidery cloth as the base of the project. 

I had a leftover discolored piece of embroidery cloth and decided to give it a go at making it sturdy with a mix of white glue and a filler, like grunge paste.

I wet the cloth with water, added the mix of glue and paste and worked it into the cloth, creating creases on purpose. I left the strip with creases in the sun to dry.
When dry I knew right away where this was taking me. I cut it in three pieces, and made a hem on my sewing machine with white thread on both the bottom and top of each peace to form a loophole through which I could put twigs or other wooden elements! 


The process of making fabric paper from tissue paper, leftover pieces of die cuts, lace, gauze, and of course decoupage glue is so easy! I like to use a watered down white glue, so the glue will dry slowly. Start with a layer of tissue paper as the base, adhere it to a craft sheet on the edges. Glue and layer the elements mentioned above to the tissue paper; keep adding until the tissue paper is covered to make a sturdy lacy-paper and you are happy with the outcome.
Do not overlap too much. Two layers, max three is best to be able to keep the patterns differentiated.
I used PaperArtsy Printed Tissue Blank (PT10 available from a PaperArtsy Stockist).


When totally dry, peel the new creation off the craft sheet, and enjoy your DIY structured paper. Here I used a green craft mat for contrast to show you the dried 'paper'.



WHITE, right? 


It turned out quite nice; a very structured surface, and worth all the effort. It also gave me additional ideas for making more "fabric papers" in the near future, lots of fun ahead.

I cut three tags from the lacy-paper with a die cut frame.

Now for my struggle, a real one. To make a project with just whites is a challenge to me. I'd like to enhance the lace and gauze patterns. To achieve that I chose to use nature's main color: green.

Infusions Dye Stain Slime is my choice to gradually add a little depth to the die cut tag pieces. It will also make the stamped images pop more, as white on white does not show the contrasts that well. It gives the edges of the tag shape a nice frame. I love that there are different color green particles in the stain, and of course some brown too. Needless to say: I tried it on a scrap piece first.





Next step of course is choosing the composition of the three 'sturdy cotton bases' and lacy-paper tags; to be filled with stamped images, spatters maybe, and adding more detail like embellishments.

Some sprigs, maybe, white washed to make it suit the project more. So far so good, we'll see.
 

Seeing it come together is always the fun part!
What composition do I prefer? Fussy cutting stamped images is a good start...









Now, I need to change the color of the stamping ink. I want the stamped images to blend in more with the color of the dried foliage. I got my color swatches of permanent inks out.. Memento Olive Grove looks the perfect match, I think... the Bamboo is too light to match the darker particles of the Slime Infusions.

SO, off I went and stamped all the stamps in both sets onto tissue paper, and onto white paper with this green color.






Now I have all of the stamping ready to assemble it to the lace paper tags, I also need some words to go with it. "FRAGILE" "NATURE" and "ART" which have to be adhered to leftover pieces of the lacy papers... Tissue paper to the rescue again, and Grunge Paste through PaperArtsy Stencil PS271.


I also created tissue paper with Grunge Paste through PaperArtsy Stencil PS270, but I did not use it in the end. New fodder... 


I am so happy I experimented a little.
Expect to see more details in this section, the final touches, assembling all the elements and some last-minute changes; some fiddling around ... always...


By moving around the elements I finally came to the compositions and adhered all of it to the lace-paper-tags. Quickly, before I could change my mind again!


I chose to fill in the parts I could not fussy cut with tissue paper, as you can see quite clearly on the middle tag here. I adhered the tissue paper with image and script to the lace-paper; when dry I adhered the fussy cut twig with bookbinding glue to line up over the tissue paper twig. 


I cut multiple twigs from our apple tree outside, and cut them to size to fit through the loopholes as shown. I chose to scrape the bark off and was surprised how beautiful the green matches the Infusions Slime color.



Of course I need white spatters; Fresco Chalk Acrylic Snowflake (FF15)


AND some spatters with Slime Infusions .. 








I ended up tearing the alphabet letters from the tissue paper (from stencil PS271) and adhered it with decoupage glue to leftover lacy paper to form the words; FRAGILE dried flowers, NATURE stamps and the ART to put that together.


I so much enjoyed playing with these products, and these various elements.

I hope you found some inspirational ideas in this post, and enjoyed the techniques to play and make art. 
Enjoy! 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)