Excercise 1

I found these excercises to be very mesmerizing -- the time went by so fast! So here are my first pictures of an altered square, circle, and leaf. For the most part, too grid-like for my tastes, but I hope that will work itself out in time.

Exercise1

Finally got down to doing exercise1. Not entirely satisfied with the end product, but much interested in the process. Loads of fun and i think i'm going to spend some time on it to really juice it out. Perhaps it would be a good idea to work with all the basic forms before moving on to ex#2.

neki desu

Stamp Carving

I carved four stamps using two erasers, both sides. This is a combination of the four designs. I think I like best the one that looks like a ladder. I now have four carved, that means 26 more to go! Good thing I love carving stamps...I find it very relaxing (and messy).

Combined Shapes

This is the exercise from Exercise One that suggests enlarging and/or reducing some of your shapes and then combining them. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to do this and found it fairly easy. I can envision using parts of these shapes in future quilts, maybe with color.

Exercise #3

The next challenge was to trace over the rearranged shapes using a variety of lines and marks. At least this is how I read the description. I wouldn't have gotten that idea from looking only at the example sketches on the page. So I'm wondering if I really did interpret the exercise the way it was written.

My favorite is the last one. I can see it as a quilting sample.

irresistible color

No matter how you spell it, color certainly makes the exercise more fun.

I used two different stamps and overlapped - precise and careful. My usual mode. Or is it a rut? Looks like a curtain design from the late 50's, early 60's doesn't it?

The red squares are filled in with a brush and paint. They are the impressions of the clamp I used to keep the foam on while the glue dried. I left a couple of them white on the upper right. I think filling them in really improves the design.



Now this one is a mess - but it's not precise, not in my rut, is it? I like the top better than the bottom but I was getting tired of seeing the white cardstock, so I thought I would just cover it. Yuk. Better to start over on fabric and do the squiggles again. Tomorrow.

Couldn't resist colour...

The lure of colour was far too great! Spent quite some time playing with the cut stamps and above are a selection of examples. Printed within a stencil, as suggested in the book, could have gone on and on as this idea held me and plan to take it further although not entirely sure in what direction! Very useful as a layer of surface decoration to build onto further.
Have now cut reverse image of three stamps so have pairs of wings!
Also printed onto a piece of fabric, just a tiny bit(no self control).

I’m not going to say I’ve finished exercise 1 because I don’t think I have. I really did find this exercise absorbing but I don’t think I have come up with anything exciting so would like to keep going until I do – maybe even trying another shape.
And yes, some of them do look a bit mucky. I ran out of Spray Mount and had to use Pritt stick – get into more mess than the children ever did with that stuff :)
I seem to have been a bit obsessed with variations on this one.In the top one here I tore the card instead of cutting – but I did have to leave a couple of the smaller bits out to make it all fit in and of course, that goes against what the exercise said to do.On this page I decided to draw a square, cut shapes and fit them in. This is not quite as easy as it sounds. Maybe I should have cut the black card square a lot smaller than the drawn square.I scanned three of the designs in then played around in PSP and used the displacement filter.I quite like the last one which looks a bit ‘fluffy’.
As I said, I still want to do some more with this one but I have got all my bits ready for exercise 2. Haven’t got any erasers and thought rather than go and buy some I would use up some of the materials I already have including some foam which I shall glue into layers before cutting and a piece of lino.Also want to try and make some stamps with this. Saw it on the Traci Bautista DVD. Its a bit squishy though so probably won’t get a sharp outline. Anyone else used one of these before?Going to try and carve six stamps a week in one sitting rather than one a day for 30 days. Will see how I get on.
Am also going to work through the exercises in order rather than dart about – will maybe get more out of them that way.

mission impossible

When I made this stamp, I thought of it as an unfinished star. Vivian saw it as a lemon slice. Now that I've stamped it on fabric in an interlocking style, there are giant Ss!

Maybe it needs some more marks on it. I'll save it for a future exercise.

I used a Staz-on stamp pad. Then I turned it over and it says "not recommended for fabric." Hmmm, wonder if it will self-destruct in 30 seconds?

Shapes

I found these very soothing to cut. Especially the squares above. I have found out in the last few years that I really like squares. After I pasted the pieces, I noticed the top one looks like a monkey. Can you see it? The rectangles were my first ones to cut and I didn't like the shape so much. But I see how I can make squares out of them.
My leaves resemble footballs or is it because we watched football yesterday. Now to expand or shrink some of these.

Printing Blocks

Blocks were made from childrens "funky foam" mounted onto foam core board, have always found this the easiest way to make printing blocks.
Wrestled with my fear of white paper and after printing into pre-painted sketch book I printed onto A4 sheets of paper, really to enable to reduce/enlarge and print just using black and white. Prefer the paisley shapes, definately "wings" in the making but hadn't noticed until I started printing although Wendy had. Looking forward to further development of these.

Exercise 1: Find blank sheets of white paper(as suggested in the book) far too scary so painted pages first.
Used a circle and then a paisley shape. Really enjoyed doing the exercise, it confirmed what I already knew... I much prefer curved lines rather that straight, finding the shapes that were dissected with curved lines far more pleasing than the straight.
Have cut stamps, not thirty I hasten to add, using the shapes i liked most so aim to print a little with them today.

At first I thought, "drat, I'm getting an imprint of the edge of lid."









And then I thought, "wow, I'm getting an imprint of the edge of the lid!"

I used a Staz-on green stamp pad at first and then without cleaning it, added watered down Golden acrylics spread out on a nonstick craft sheet.

These are stamps made by cutting out phun foam and glueing it on plastic lids. I think the almost clear lids will make it easy to place the stamps - except of course, on black fabric.
It was just a repeat of the circle exercise - I cut out a circle and then dissected and reassembled them almost duplicating the paper circles.

Squares

I'm not in a mood to move on yet. Still working on Exercise #1 with a different shape.

Heart shape exercise 1

I used a heart shape. Cut out a bunch and played around. The hardest thing was trying to keep the cut pieces within a heart outline. All the samples here were cut from a heart the same size.













I photocopied one image (middle page, bottom image) and played around with it. It didn't take long to achieve two border designs and a handful of repeat patterns.




I transfered the image onto an eraser using a solvent transfer medium and cut it out. To get the mirror image I inked up the stamp and stamped onto another eraser.