First shots of wall-hanging in progress

Here is an overall shot.  Last night I affixed the lace.  You can still see the edges hanging off because I haven't trimmed them yet.  You can also see my beautiful (not!) plastic garbage bag background that I work on.  I took this next to a window while standing on the counter, BTW.

Here is a closer shot that shows more detail but still shows the entire width of the piece.  I think the color is more true in this shot.

Here is a closeup.  I hope you can see the subtle vertical stripes in the background of the piece created by the scrim.  I hope that these will create interesting effects as I go.  I have a few small butterfly lace motifs on order, and I am hoping to add three or so of them in an accent color to stand out from the rest of the piece.  

Next, I will begin applying iridescent layers.  I did not yet up until this point because of the quantity of paint, but I do like this matte base color.  

Battenburg Lace Motif in progress

Here is a lace motif piece that I am trying out.  I am using lace from a pillow sham that I cut up (got it from Goodwill).  I just got to the point where I laid down the first iridescent color in combination with affixing the lace.  I am experimenting with some more representational forms of L&L.

Here is another photo of it.  I am including this photo because it shows how the lace actually appears lighter than the background.  I believe it's because it sucked up paint while the background did not because it was prepared by acrylic paint under-layers.  I left the background plain on this one (instead of scrim or whatever) and I don't know how that's going to work out.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

Now that the children have opened their gifts and are busy playing, it's my turn to play!  I just started my first large, ambitious piece.  I am hoping to make a 3-ft-long wallhanging.   I have been preparing the Lutradur with some inexpensive acrylic paint, and today I prepared the actual foundation.  For this layer I still used inexpensive acrylic paint (Delta Vintage Wine) but I added the foundation texture.  I decided to use one long piece of scrim with loose vertical folds.  I extended the scrim past the piece on all four sides and will trim it later.  I learned from the bookmark piece that I don't like the look of the background lace stopping before the edge.

I opened up the scrim to its furthest width and then arranged loose folds on the piece (like a curtain).  Then I used a round sponge brush and started tacking it down with paint in various places.  Gradually I worked until the entire surface was saturated in paint.  This took almost two little bottles of paint!  Now I'm out of my favorite cheap color.  Boohoo!  I think I'll wait a few days to brave the stores to get some more.  I dislike holiday shopping crowds.

Anyway, the resulting effect is subtle vertical stripes of texture that vary slightly and will make a nice background. Next, I plan to add some lace accents on top of it.  I considered doing the lace in this step also, but because this step used sooo much paint, I decided to hold off so this layer could dry properly.  If I can get a decent picture of the texture tomorrow when it dries, I will post it.

In case you're wondering why I'm working in purple so much, I bought a house with purple walls.  Yep, purple.  It's a beautiful house and the color is nice, but you have to be careful what you put with it.  So, I have been experimenting with purples leading up to this wallhanging so that it would be the right hues for my wall.   After the wallhanging is complete, I will try to snap a photo of it on the wall so you can see it in context.  But it will have to be a nice sunny day to get the colors right, and sunny days are in short supply in eastern Washington at this time of year.

Bookmark with gold flakes

Here are two photos of the same piece.  The top photo shows the detail better, but the bottom photo (although slightly blurry) shows the colors more "true to life."  I experimented with gold flakes from the papermaking aisle at Michael's on this piece.  I experimented with gold flakes on another piece, but they looked awful.  However, rubbed into the hem-type-lace on this piece, they looked really interesting.  Of course, they have to be added at the last stage.  I think the key is actually rubbing them in, not having them "sit" on top.  I might try another piece with hem lace as a background texture, but I'll run it all the way past the edges and then trim.  I don't like the edges as they show here.  But overall, I think this bookmark turned out pretty well, and it's flatter than the other attempt.  My DH wants this bookmark and plans to trim the edges off, which is perfectly fine with me.

My First Framed Piece!

Now this I am pretty happy with.  I saw an old pillowcase in Goodwill, and I wasn't sure if the lace would work, but the children urged me to purchase it.  When I went to cut the lace off the pillowcase, I had even more doubts, because it was the kind that basically fell apart somewhat when removed.  Well, I had seen on Expression Studio where someone had laid strips of lace vertically on a piece, and I tried the technique with this piece, and I really like the texture.  When I got the piece to where I wanted it, I took one of the colors and sort of "washed" an old frame with the glass removed.  It goes really nicely with my walls, so I plan to keep it in the foyer on a media cabinet.  I also sprayed it with glitter, which doesn't show so well in the picture.  Oh, the picture.  My DH and I went through several permutations trying to get a decent shot.  I still haven't really made friends with the camera to try to photograph this stuff very well. Oh well, I will learn.

Some Early Pieces

Here are two pieces, a triangle scrap and a bookmark.  I like the effect of the scrim in both pieces.  I'm sorry the picture of the photo is a teeny bit blurry, but this photo showed the colors better than the others I took.  I also like the effect of lace flowers in a slightly different color, but that "feature" also makes it a lousy bookmark since they can come off easily.  Oh well!  I have another, flatter bookmark in the works.  I like the colors in the triangle piece but am not sure what I can do with it.  Oh well.  It was a good experiment.

Trying to make peace with my camera

I really like L&L pieces in person, but with photos, well, they lose something.  Some essence . . . some luminous quality.  I am finding this quite frustrating.  I'm really a PhD (Push here, Dummy) kind of camera person, so I'm sure there's ways to fix this.  

Since I use Lumiere and other iridescent paints, I think it makes it harder for the camera.  I am going to experiment over the next few days and see if I can do better capturing some of my early pieces.  

After a couple of weeks of experimenting, today I finished a piece that I feel like framing!  Hooray!  I took the glass out of a cheap frame that I had hanging around and painted the frame with a complementary color to the piece.  Tomorrow I hope to put it together and photograph it.

Introduction

I never thought I would be doing something artistic.  Here's my first try at L&L--don't laugh! And it's not as yellow in person as it appears in the photo.

This is also where I discovered my secret alternative to Lutradur--dark gray weed fabric!  I was too impatient to wait until my Lutradur arrived, so I went and chopped off a small piece of the weed fabric from one of our flowerbeds.  Although it's surface is a little rougher, it works much the same way as the Lutradur, and it's cheaper and more readily available.  Get the kind with a "spun" look that you can sort of see through.  The expensive, totally opaque weed fabrics will not work.