Something About Nothing

 May has felt like a slow month art wise.  I feel like I've done absolutely nothing, but I guess I have done stuff. Call it play, experimenting, practice, whatever. Trying out new stencils in my sketchbook. Playing with someone's TikTok tutorial. Wish I could remember who it was. Coloring for hours while talking to customer service trying to figure out what happened to the website I manage for the Utah Surface Design Group. Turned out we were hacked. Malware. Sigh. I'm now spending hours rebuilding the site. utahsurfacedesigngroup.com Had to start from scratch. Fortunately I found the pre-built theme I'd used before so it wasn't as much work as it could have been. And yes, I did have a backup, but that's a whole other story. It's looking almost back to normal! I just need to upload the gallery photos. My evenings are being spent in front of the TV working on blocks for the Social Justice Sewing Academy. This is one of 12 blocks I have. I bought myself a new ...

I've done a lot of sun printing with Setacolor Paints but I recently heard that you can do sun painting with ANY textile or craft paint. "What?!?! NO WAY," you say, "that's IMPOSSIBLE!!   You have to have specialized paints that contain special,  fancy chemical stuff in them to sun paint!!" I didn't believe it either so I pulled out the Setacolor, Jacquard Textile paints and cheap-o acrylic craft paints and tried them side by side.   Guess what?   They ALL worked! Here are my experiments so you can see for yourself: 1. Pfd painted with watered down Setacolor, Jacquard Textile and Acrylic Craft paints.  2. Add various resist items and set in the sun to dry. 3. Remove items and see the amazing results! You can't see it in the photo but there are some pale images in the Jacquard section.  I thought the textile paint had already been watered down when I used it but perhaps it hadn't so I decided to do another experi...

I decided to be a follower. This isn't something new really, I follow a lot. . .my children, my husband, my cats, magazines, blogs, facebook, twitter. Perhaps I should lead a bit more, but for now I am content to follow and play. My latest following is of Video Prompts from artist/author Melanie Testa over at Quilting Arts Magazine/TV/website. Melanie wrote a book called Inspired to Quilt: Creative Experiments in Art Quilt Imagery . In her blog, Melanie, has asked her readers to come and play along with the ideas she explores in her new book. Our first play prompt is to doodle and then based upon those doodles, make a craft foam stamp and a glue stamp. I have doodled: And based upon these doodles I am making stamps. I decided to use some foam stickers I have left over from another project for my first stamp. Aren't they the cutest little things? But I'm only going to use the egg shaped stickers. I found a wood flooring sample at home depot and decided it would be a per...

The sun came out again today! For those of you who aren't familiar with this thing called the sun, it is a bright light up in the sky that will one day soon make it's way through the clouds to your house. Believe me, the sun likes to play so he'll fight his way through soon! Today's playing was on some plain white fabric I found in my stash. Not sure if it is 100% cotton, but I think it is. It's hard to say with some of the older pieces in my stash. Step One: I spritzed the fabric with water to make it nice and damp. Step Two: After mixing a couple colors together to get this beautiful turquoise color I painted wide stripes on one piece and. . . Flicked spots on the other. Hey, why not?! I also sprayed a bit more water on these splashes so they would spread more. Step Three: I added yellow to what was left of the white, filling the stripes in completely and splashing on the other, and coloring in the edges. I put keys, metal and plastic, onto the splatter...