Geodeco made from nappy liner bg

Oh my I can't believe two months has passed since I have posted.We have had six weeks of school holidays,Christmas,New Years,a category 2 cyclone and a ten day visit from my Mum and niece in that time...all in all not much time to be creative though the thoughts to do so are never far from my mind.In late November I participated in a challenge at the After Midnight yahoo group.We were all sent a small wooden salad fork,a small rubber band and a piece of loose weave hessian material.The task was to make a Geometric decoration(Geodeco) from scrap paper and incorporate these items into the end product.Zeborah Loray came up with the concept for Geodecos and has excellent instructions in the tutorial section at the After Midnight Art Stamps web site.
I used some of my nappy liner backgrounds for mine as you need pretty scraps decorated on both sides.The end result was quite large and colourful.It doesn't scan or photograph well but is really vibrant and has lots of texture

SSSooo can you guess where the items sent to us are in mine???.The hessian material I pulled apart and then rolled into balls in my palm with PVA glue.I then dipped the balls in Opals embossing enamels and hit them with the heat gun.They made the red beads you see.The elastic band was painted gold and put around the top glass pebble.Lastly the salad fork was cut in pieces and painted gold and placed in various spots around the item.
All the entries are displayed here and were truly amazing.It's wondrous how we all came up with such diverse end result with three weird items and some scrap card.By the way there is a warning with making geodeco thingies...they are totally addictive and you will never ever throw your scraps out again LOL.You can make them as big or as small as you want.Have fun

Nappy Liner Rubbings

Today I spent most of my time making nappy liner rubbing backgrounds.This was also something I had learnt from Dale Rollerson at the Art retreat I mentioned in my first post.It's easy and fun.Sometimes it works better then others so is unpredictable. Firstly I made some drawing ink and water backgrounds by spritzing a sheet of clear overhead transparency with water.Then randomly drop drips of two colours of drawing ink on top.They spread out and burst into colour. Lay some cheap gloss card gloss side down into the wet mix and lift it back up. Place on news paper to dry. It will bend at the edges but straightens out smooth again once it dries. I use Shiva paint sticks and cheap nappy liners.With some of the liners I painted them with Lumiere's(shimmery metallic fabric paints) first. Select a surface to rub over. I used some plastic rubbing plates I got from The Thread Studio .Rub several colours of paint stick on top of the liner held in place on the rubbing surface till you are happy with the look and the liner is covered. Once done I place the rubbing coloured side up onto the card stock I made earlier. I put this between two sheets of Galdbake and ironed over the surface using a very hot dry iron setting.The nappy liner burns off and the paint stick part sticks to the surface. It works better on a matt surface as the gloss was a bit too slick. To overcome this I then added some Vliesofix between the liner rubbing and the gloss card and ironed and that looked good too.



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Another thing I tried was painting the nappy liner with Lumiere's.When dry I tore them into bits and ironed them onto the back ground using Vliesofix bits between the painted liner and the back ground.I then placed other bits of Vliesofix down and put foil on top coloured side up and ironed that.On other drawing ink bits I just placed some Vliesofix down and then the foil and ironed that.It makes nice back grounds but is very hard to photograph as it's so shimmery.

Butterfly Dancer

Last month I was inspired by some Fantasy Film and Opals embossing enamel flower creations that I saw in one of my yahoo groups.Jane Stumpfell had used wire as her flower base.I had a wire material covered butterfly decoration so I used that to create a large sun catcher using Franklin Opals transfers in the wings and Fantasy Film behind it.Once again I used the iron to attach the Fantasy Film and Franklin Opals behind the Opals transfers.If I had layed down the Fantasy Film and applied more Opals using the heat gun the Opals Franklin Transfers would have re-melted and distorted. Below is what the butterfly started out like.

I then pulled all the material out and separated the two sets of wings so I had just the metal wing shapes.In each section I did Opals Franklin transfers of the cherub image.To do this you make toner based copies of the image on copy paper.Trim so slightly larger to the shape of the wing.Apply a generous coat of Versamark watermark clear ink to the top of the image.Place metal wing section over top.Melt Opals Franklin clear embossing enamels and pour it thru the wing shape over the image.Leave till set and cooled.Then take it to a sink partly filled with warm water.Gently rub away at the back of the image while immersed in the water.The paper backing will come off leaving the image in the Opals Franklin.You can see images of the process at my Webshots album .

After I had done each section I cut Fantasy Film to fit behind each area and layed it on Glad Bake on the ironing board.Set the iron to cotton,non steam and remove any water from iron.I then sprinkled on Opals Franklin clear(pic top left below)and folded more of the Glad Bake over the top and ironed it(pic 2nd right below).When cooled I peeled off the Glad Bake which gave me Fantasy Film encased in Opals Franklin in the shape of the wing(pic 3rd left).This was then put in place behind the Opals transfers on the wing(pic bottom right).

Once more I folded the Glad Bake over the wing section and ironed it so the Fantasy Film and Opals part adhered to the Opals transfer part of the wing.When I had done all section I used a pair of scissors to trim close to the wire edge.In sections that were too thick for the Scissors I used a Clover quilt iron to melt off the excess.Once trimmed I applied a coat of Plaid royal coat Dimensional Magic in clear and sprinkled in some glitter.After that had set hard I rejoined the wings with wire and placed copper tape along all the edges.

From my scraps of Opals paper I had a lovely piece of brown stained tissue and Vilene with strips of Fantasy Film and Opals Franklin ironed into it.This became my stamp surface.I stamped the belly dancer image from After Midnight art stamps on it using Neopaque white paint.I added a fabric ink stained flower at the top and Krafty Lady face mould plus I added some beading to the belly dancers clothes and used this as the body for my butterfly.At last my butterfly dancer was completed.