Shrink Film Update

 I have had a busy day here on the mountain. It was cold and snowy up here and not much fun to be outdoors. Thankfully the forecast shows warmer days to come. I am ready for spring!

And speaking of spring, I think my new piece has a bit of a spring feel.After I shrunk this down I really wanted to give it a wrap to showcase those lovely rainbow colors. So I made this wrap with some of my hand dyed rainbow silk ribbon.

 I really do love the color it added but I still think this piece is way too detailed.  I plan on doing things a little more simple in the future to see how the color pops. The black just dominates too much. It was just an experiment though. 

What do you think? Is it too dark or do you think it shows the colors sufficiently?

Since I loved this piece so much I did decide to refine the sketch and worked hard all week to make this new version. I say work but how can it be when I have so much fun doing it?

So here is the new version, refined quite a bit and much larger. I am really out of practice! It has been so long since I did anything with a pencil  that I even took a quick refresher course on shading to get back in the groove. It wasn’t long though before I was shading away happily. I can do this!

This piece will go on my living room wall. I even have a space that has been waiting for that special something. It will fit right in. 

Now I am onto more shrink film experiments, I am not done playing with this medium for sure. I think it has a lot of interesting possibilities and I want to see if any of these crazy ideas in my head work out. I will keep you updated. 

Until then, take care and enjoy the spring weather!

 I have had a busy day here on the mountain. It was cold and snowy up here and not much fun to be outdoors. Thankfully the forecast shows warmer days to come. I am ready for spring!

And speaking of spring, I think my new piece has a bit of a spring feel.After I shrunk this down I really wanted to give it a wrap to showcase those lovely rainbow colors. So I made this wrap with some of my hand dyed rainbow silk ribbon.

 I really do love the color it added but I still think this piece is way too detailed.  I plan on doing things a little more simple in the future to see how the color pops. The black just dominates too much. It was just an experiment though. 

What do you think? Is it too dark or do you think it shows the colors sufficiently?

Since I loved this piece so much I did decide to refine the sketch and worked hard all week to make this new version. I say work but how can it be when I have so much fun doing it?

So here is the new version, refined quite a bit and much larger. I am really out of practice! It has been so long since I did anything with a pencil  that I even took a quick refresher course on shading to get back in the groove. It wasn't long though before I was shading away happily. I can do this!

This piece will go on my living room wall. I even have a space that has been waiting for that special something. It will fit right in. 

Now I am onto more shrink film experiments, I am not done playing with this medium for sure. I think it has a lot of interesting possibilities and I want to see if any of these crazy ideas in my head work out. I will keep you updated. 

Until then, take care and enjoy the spring weather!

More Alcohol Ink Experiments

I have come to the realization that I am terrible at blogging. I’m not sure what it is. The time it takes to upload the pictures, sort them and make the post maybe? I know I get lost in my studio and say to myself ten times a day, “I should blog about this!”  But then it doesn’t happen.

 I think I just need to make myself blog no matter how quick and unpolished just to keep a journal, even if only to myself, of what I have been up to. So I am going to try to be better. 

I am really busy in the studio and I am accomplishing a lot though it doesn’t show here. I want to post real quick about what I have done the last few weeks with the alcohol inks. They are not the only thing I have been playing with but I am still very excited about them.

 They are just so bright and playful!

My next experiment after the shells was with the flower beads. After all, this is what I bought the inks for. I made a small ink stamper by gluing a piece of felt onto the end of a small tool I had. 

I have since realized that it would have been better if I had glued a piece of velcro on the end so I could change the piece of felt and made a better tool. Learn as you go!

I loaded my stamper with three colors of ink and stamped away with the ink.

I think the results speak for themselves.

I am so excited about how they turned out. I absolutely adore them.

These blue ones are my favorite so far but I have only started playing with these. I can’t wait to try more color combinations.

I went on to try sealing some of these with resin. Although I am fascinated with resin and plan on doing much with it, I found that I prefer the matte finish on these flower beads. The pictures of the finished resin beads did not turn out well so I wont be including them in this post but here is a picture of one pair of earrings I made with the resin ones. As you can see, they are much shinier and the resin made the inks run together. I could probably alleviate that with the sealer and I may try again next time I pour resin.

Since then I went on to play with shrink plastic. I haven’t done anything with this medium before except play with shrinky dinks when I was little. I had no idea what I was doing! I started out by inking a nice wing on the plastic and then proceeded to paint it with my inks. I loved how it turned out.

I still had to bake it though and really had no idea how this would go. To start out with I am fairly sure I had the oven too hot. It curled up quite bad and wouldn’t go back down. When I took it out the inks looked almost black in places. It was dark dull and ugly I thought.

Holding it up to the light you can still see the color somewhat but even that was minimal.

So I spent the afternoon experimenting and realized that: 

1. I was using too high of a temperature. 

2. The inks intensify when baking.

 It is much better to apply them afterwards.

3. It is better to apply a weight after bringing the piece out of the oven to help keep it flat as it cools. 

So I made a few smaller pieces. Inked the outline as before and baked them without the alcohol ink. Then I applied the alcohol ink afterward. Much better! I also cleaned the ink off the big piece and reheated it and flattened it with a weight (my bench block worked perfectly)

All in all, I am in love with the alcohol inks. I still have a lot to learn about them but I think we have become fast friends. The shrink plastic is also an interesting medium. You can do quite intricate works of art on it and then shrink it down to have a nice piece in miniature. I am sure I will also be playing with it a lot in the future. What I really want to do is wrap it in wire.

Until next time I wish you well,

A Look at Alcohol Inks

I recently purchased several bags of acrylic flower beads. They are nice shapes but sadly uninspiring. The colors are matte, and generic. I was disappointed when I opened the package and saw that they did not live up to my dreams. I stuffed them in a drawer and forgot about them for awhile.

 Then one day I happened upon a video about someone coloring a mug with alcohol inks. I was fascinated. You can paint ceramics, and glass and wood and metal with these? 

Color me intrigued! 

So I ordered some and had my son bring them over in his suitcase from the US. When he arrived we met in the south of France to spend the first week of his visit down with the family. So here I was with this exciting new medium and no where near my studio and those pesky beads of mine. 

One day we went to the beach and as I walked along the shore with my son we picked up an assortment of seashells. I noticed that the most prevelant shells were a plain white shell. Not very interesting to look at but maybe, just maybe a perfect canvas?

  So we filled our pocket with maybe 2 dozen shells and came home with our treasure. The next evening we got out the inks and alcohol, plastic sheets and what not to play. Everyone joined in on the fun and we soon had a pile of pretty colored shells. 

 I deemed our experiment a success. I was smart enough to buy the sealant with the ink and sealed all the pieces and brought them home. I then sat down and wrapped them.

I was so happy with how they turned out that I had to pull out the inks again. This is a small pair of cabachons I inked. I am in love!