Welcome Semester 3 GD: Lelainia Lloyd Project #1 Mixed Media Bunting

"Hello from the west coast of Canada! I’m Lelainia Lloyd (that’s pronounced “le LANE ya” in case you were wondering) and I live just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. I have been very happily married for 24 years this October and we have a 23 year old son who has left the nest. I am also mum to a beautiful 6 ½ year old black Lab named Indiana Jones. When I am not making art, I am busy doing advocacy work, volunteering, writing and mentoring.

I discovered mixed media art in 2001, after a serious knee injury forced me to spend a lot of time sitting with my leg propped up to recover. I started poking around on the internet and eventually joined a mixed media/altered art swap group. By chance, one of my swap partners happened to be Leandra who it turned out, liked what I was doing. She surprised me with an invitation to join PaperArtsys design team when the company was first launching back in 2004. I accepted and the rest, as they say, is history. Last fall when she invited me to do some design work for Paper Artsy again, how could I say no? I enjoy working with her products and she has always been so good to me. I am very happy to be back"!

Hello September! I always look forward to Autumn. When I was thinking about what project I would lead off with, I was inspired by the idea of the first day of school where you’d walk into your new classroom for the first time and it would be all fresh and clean and decorated by the teacher. Seeing that always made me excited about the possibilities of everything I would be learning. I thought it might be nice to freshen up our art spaces with a pretty mixed media bunting, in the spirit of September’s new beginnings.

I began by cutting a triangle template from a piece of laminated cardstock that measured 4 x 6 inches. You could use cardboard scrap to do this. I traced 7 triangles on Smoothy White Stamping Card and cut them out.

Next, I used my brayer to apply Tango paint to half the triangles and Beach Hut to the other half, leaving some white space for a second colour. Once the paint dried, I added Yellow Submarine to the ones I’d painted with Tango and Limelight to the ones painted with Beach Hut. I worked the paint to minimize any obvious brayer lines. The idea was to have it look almost tie dyed.

To build up the layers, I added the Mini Well Rounded Stencil 6x6 Crafters Workshop Stencil. I used Cherry Red on the yellow/orange triangles and Orchid on the blue/green ones. I used a small stiff stencil brush which worked really well. I found that it’s better to use a minimal amount of paint on the brush as you work to get a cleaner result.

I added additional layers with stamps from Ellen Vargo EEV06 and the circles from Sara Naumann ESN10 with Black StazOn Ink. 

 EEV06

ESN10

Sometimes I blotted a bit of the ink of the stamp so the imprint was less intense. I wanted the stamping to look more organic and less “perfect”-I think it’s more interesting that way. I also want to mention this was my first time working with the Smoothy card and I LOVED how it took the paint and inks-everything stayed crisp and bright. I’m sold!

Once all the layers were done, I used my sewing machine to zig zag stitch around each triangle to essentially outline it. I love sewing paper-it’s fun and kind of meditative.

In order to string the bunting together, I needed to have some sort of “string”. I could have used some pretty fibers, but I decided it would be more festive to use torn fabric. I had some lime coloured fabric that I thought was fun. I tore a strip about 1 inch wide x the width of the fabric and stamped it again with Black StazOn Ink.

I lay the fabric strip out on my desk and laid out the triangles, alternating the two colours. I left a bit of space at each end of the bunting for hanging. When I felt I had them spaced evenly, I folded the fabric in half lengthwise and sandwiched the tops of the triangles in between, pinning them with straight pins. I sewed down the length of the bunting, using a zig zag stitch and backtacking at the start and end, to secure everything. I snipped each end of the fabric and tore it a little ways up just to finish the ends off nicely.

At this point, I was happy with how it looked, but I want to point out that you could easily add letters-either stamped ones, stickers or rub-ons to spell out a word, a name or a message if you wanted to. There are also so many delicious Fresco Finish paint colours, your options for colourways are endless. 

If you wanted to make a longer bunting, you could always tear several strips of fabric and then sew or tie them together. I also think it would be fun to get together with a group of friends and create a bunch of triangles together in different colours and then swap so everyone had a nice variety to string together. 

If you have other ideas about how you would adapt this project, I’d love to hear them! Better yet-show me! 

~Lelainia~

A huge thanks to Lelainia from all at PaperArtsy HQ ... It is a real pleasure to have you back in the PA family and we are all looking forward (old and new followers alike) to being inspired by your art once again. The bright zesty colour palette looks so fresh and uplifting, Smoothy is the ideal medium to keep colours true. The addition of the trim and stitching adds that extra dimension to this project.

We would love you to join in with our monthly challenge. If you are inspired by any of this month's guests who have blogged between Sept 1st 2014 and Sept  30th 2014 then join in and link up your creativity HERE. You will go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. You need to add your link by 19:00 (London time)  Sept 30th 2014