Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Odds and ends

I thought my "Stuff" was supposed to come back today and I would be trekking between my basement and the hospital. However, the general contractor decided late yesterday, a mere half day before the stuff was to come back, that he wanted his workers to put another coat of paint on the floor in the basement. That means another two to three days of drying time and waiting for the basement floor to dry. That's going to be hard in this humidity, since we're in a rainy cycle. So, instead of spending the day deciding if I want my glue gun on the top shelf or the second shelf, I still have to zig and zag around the boxes and messes I've grown frustratingly accustomed to. At least I have more time to spend at the hospital with Sally and with Billie (George's wife) as she gets away from things by sneaking over to my house to hide and drink pomegranate tea.

Knowing this would be a busy week, I decided to plan ahead. A few days ago, I demoed a gel medium watercolor background. When I was finished with all the watered down acrylic paint I needed, I made some faux tie dye using the last of the watered down mixture. I used Bounty brand paper towels, because they are the closest thing to fabric you can get without using fabric.

I first used red and allowed it to dry. I then used brown and came up with this, which I'm really in love with.

The next one was lavender and copper. This towel could use another color, which I may add one of these days if I have any leftover paint.

And finally, I whipped up another batch of gel medium and Mica powders (Pearl Ex bronze). This time the "stamps" were dry and I used a lot of Pearl Ex in the mixture. I was trying to learn from my previous mistakes. Now I love the hands so much I hate to water color over them. So, I took photos of a few of the hands I stamped. I may or may not color around the images, depending on what I want to do with the images. I'm just thrilled that I was able to get such great images before the stamp turned to petrified potato.

1 thoughtful remarks:

Anonymous said...

cool tie-dyed paper towels...maybe "splatter" a second color on? whatever you decide, these will be wonderful texture for backgrounds or additions in collage. I hope your life settles down soon...take care of yourself too!
Dianne