Frustration and exasperation

Frustration and exasperation set in on Wednesday. First, I went to the thrift store and came home empty handed. The fact that it was 95 degrees F when I returned empty handed should have forewarned of events to come. After doing a few more Wednesday blog hops, I had to get off my bottom and make art.

For those of you who were here a few days ago, you remember the tutorial I presented and the results I got from the traditional arashi shibori technique. In case you missed it, here is the original post. I decided to redo the fabric that you see in the bottom half in this photo (and fabric). I forgot to take a photo of the piece before I wrapped it, but just imagine that this piece has been torn in half at the "V." I decided to give it another try. I left the top half intact and wrapped the newly sized bottom half around the pole.

I am trying something new on my blog today, too. Not sure I'm going to like it, but I assure you, these small photos will enlarge to full screen if clicked on. If you like the look, you can let me know. If you don't like clicking for a larger view, you can let me know that, too. Of course, there's a lot of other stuff to discuss. It's brutal honesty day, I guess.

You can see, I've already wrapped the piece that didn't get much paint the first time around. After wrapping the pipe, I started my lunch by putting a pot of rotini on to cook. After all, how long could it take to spray three or four swipes on a cloth?

I took the project outside, but it was so hot, my brain must have been mush because I didn't photograph anything I did between wrapping and the completed project. I guess I was hungry and wanted a quick spray, then back inside. Of course, that's when all the excitement happened, and I failed to document the action with even a single photo. As an aside, the fabric the pole is sitting on is the same I used to wipe up the paint in the tutorial. I didn't paint it. It may be the best piece of all, although it is much stiffer than I thought the fabric paint was when I first used it.

To make a long story even longer, I had my paint upside down in the bucket of water, as suggested by Simply Spray. You can see some of the canisters are missing. That's because the black and the poppy red would not spray, even after I had taken such care with them. So I shook, I wiped the nozzle, I even poked a tiny straight pin into the nozzle, but NOTHING came out. And the black was the fullest of all. I had already sprayed cranberry and bright pink and needed a color to offset the two. I did everything but throw the canisters into my chiminea (and no, I wouldn't do that to the environment or my chiminea). In the process, I forgot all about my rotini.

When I came back inside to wash one of the canisters that was dripping paint, I realized I had left the pasta cooking well past the "al dente" stage and well into the "chef boyardee sans sauce" stage.

Here I was, my rotini was now mush, I had no black paint, the poppy color tried to work when I ran it under running water, but only managed to dribble out from under the cap enough to stain my kitchen sink, and I was one frustrated, hot, hungry person with paint staining my sink! At about $6.00 a can, I was appalled, but now pretty sure Simply Spray was right when they suggested these were ONE USE containers.

I was able to get the purple to work and managed to get a decent enough traditional arashi shibori pattern out of this piece. But I have no black (the black in the fabric is from the previous dyeing/spraying), I'm not sure the other colors will ever spray again, even though they are sitting upside down in water, and I ended up refrigerating the rotini and fixing a new batch. Unless you are sure you will use a can of this stuff in one setting, I suggest thinking long and hard before buying it. Even with a Michael's coupon, it is still out of reach for most artists unless you are planning to do it as a group. After all, you can do the math. There were six cans, one for each of six colors, at six dollars a can.

I do hope you'll let me know if you like the format of the smaller photos that enlarge, or not. I know some people use this layout all the time. By the way, I'm writing to Simply Spray to let them know my concerns over their paint. And so no one misunderstands my frustration or the focus of this post, it's not in my failure to get this product to work, it's in the product itself.

Today's blog has nothing to do with fabric. I guess it's because I'm really burned out on fabric for the rest of today. That's when I searched for a blog spotlighting my second love, handmade paper. I found some incredible pieces by a UK artist Sue Pegg. She incorporates wax and plaster in the paper to seal in lovely images and text. There are many layers to her paper, including hand stitched words preserved by wax in the paper. This is one stunning technique I'd never even considered before, and I was mesmerized by the process. I also like that Sue, like me, doesn't use a deckle. It makes for a much softer and frayed edge, something I also prefer in my own papermaking. Please check out Sue's web site today. Although there are not many images in the gallery (the only link with images), what are there are worth a visit. I'm sure you will be inspired for various reasons, as was I.