playing around

I've been playing around with scraps and bits and pieces, making postcards to donate to Virginia Spiegel's fiberart for a cause project (www.virginiaspiegel.com). It's an excellent cause (all proceeds go to the American Cancer Society) and also gives one the freedom to try new things.
Anyway, I had a page I had printed out of a flower picture I had manipulated in Photoshop Elements. The flower is a native prairie plant, Monarda, also known as bee balm. On my monitor, the manipulations had looked great. But it printed out way to dark. It hung on my design wall for weeks. When I was getting ready to play, I decided to sacrifice it for the cause.

Both of these pieces came from that original 8x10 print. I had heard about using Shiva paintsticks to do rubbings, so I got out this stamp I had carved.


The original stamp design was inspired by my friend's pond. In the summer time, it gets covered with duckweed. He has a paddlewheel boat, and one day some kids were paddling it around in circles. Their wake caused these swirls and ripples in the duckweed. I took the picture and transferred it to the rubber, then carved it out. It's a nice random but organic pattern.
I stretched the monarda picture over the block and rubbed on it with two colors of irridescent Shiva paintsticks--gold and copper. By varying the pressure, I was able to vary the pattern.
Next I cut them close to size. I wasn't quite satisfied, they were a little blah. I got out some fabric paints, wet them down to blur the edges, and started adding color. The top one got mostly black, the bottom one purple and yellow. The Shivas turned out to be a resist, which added to the resulting texture.
Finally I added some random stitching, painted fusing, the words 'bee balm' on one. I finished them up by layering them with Timtex and a back, and finished off the edges with a finishing stitch on my machine.
Not bad for scraps.