One Thing Leads To Another

I had such good intentions this week: I was going to finish a blog post about the new silk screens I'm creating from scraps of hand-dyed silk, wooden picture frames, and acrylic paint. The photos are all finished and the project I'm creating with the new screens is coming along nicely enough to show it off, but still the post sits, half-written, in my Dashboard. It will just have to wait another week.

Because after almost two months of foundering, I'm finally starting to find some creative traction and suddenly, the ideas are coming fast and furious. Studies and small, completed pieces are beginning to pop up all over the studio. While somewhat chaotic, this is a good process, and a lot of great ideas can come from such experimentation and internal brainstorming.

The bad news, of course, is that such a week- while exhilarating as an artist- makes for lousy blog posts. I promise I'll talk about all of this once I get it settled into my head and true work starts emerging, but in the meantime, here's a bit of eye candy- two of the studies I'm working on, one in paper, the other in hand-dyed fabrics.

This first study is done in paper- one sheet of black paper painted with white Stacked Journaling, and one sheet of white paper painted with black SJ.  The white piece had some of the negative spaces between the words cut out with an E-Xacto blade, and then the two pieces were layered together. This resulted in the next study...

This second study, measuring about 12" x 18", starts with a background of my  hand-dyed cotton mounted on heavy interfacing. The top "reverse applique" layer is also hand-dyed cotton, in turquoise. I mounted the turquoise fabric onto a sheet of double-sided fusable web and then saturated the fibers with a light coating of fluid matte medium to help check potential fraying. Using a thick Sharpie, I created a Stacked Journaling text block on the paper backing of the fusable and then began cutting it out with an E-Xacto blade. It will be ironed onto the orange fabric base once all the turquoise pieces have been cut out.

Also finished this week: a very cool Fun Foam stamp I carved out of more Stacked Jouranling.

Am I relieved that the muse appears to be returning from her hiatus? Yeah, a bit!

Have a great weekend!