Days 2, 3, and 4 of taking fabric in a new direction

To catch you up to speed, if you haven't seen Day 1, it can be seen here.  I have a plan and a vague idea where I'm going with this fabric now that I've had a night to think about it.  Unfortunately, it's raining and I have NO room in my craft room for drying more than two pieces at a time.

Supplies are simple: fabric from Day 1 that was misted and some cheap (the cheaper the better) black craft paint.

Originally I planned to squirt this paint out of the bottle, but I couldn't get the plastic seal off, so decided to remove the cap and use a paint brush to spread the paint.

Here it is finished and drying on my craft table.

 After it was dry, I scanned it.  The colors are much truer in the scan.

I also colored the pastel piece I demoed on Day 1, allowed it to dry, and scanned it, too.  And yes, that's all I finished on this day.  More tomorrow, if it isn't raining.

"Tomorrow" turned into two days before I could get outside to play due to the rain.  On my outdoor desk are various craft paints.  The two on the right are metallic.  I also have an old faux credit card to spread the paint around, since I am brayer challenged.

I began with bright yellow, but when I started to squirt out a dollop of paint on the piece I demoed on Day 1, apparently I had already thinned it down with water.  That meant I couldn't move it until it had dried.  And because it was so muggy and humid, it didn't dry for hours and hours and hours and hours and (OK, you get the idea).  That translated to even more hours of waiting.

For the monochromatic pink fabric, I added a touch of red and bronze metallic paint, and spread them with my plastic card.

The yellow paint was still not dry when I placed it, along with the other fabric, on my porch rail.  I ran out of yellow paint before I got to the end of the fabric, that's why it is missing some as shown.  I'm still liking the direction this fabric is taking.

Here I've scanned a small portion of the originally monochromatic fabric.

You can see that the wet paint bled into the color mists, giving the edges a perceived shadow. The paint made the hand* of the fabric stiff, but since I'm turning these into art pieces, not fabric for clothing, that doesn't worry me.

*Hand is the way the fabric feels, usually against your skin or to your touch.  It's especially important if the fabric is to be turned into clothing.  And of course, if I was going to turn this fabric into a pillow, it would have a very rough hand in spots where the paint is heavy.

Although this fabric is intended for either an art quilt or a scrappy book cover, not clothing or pillows, I'm really liking where this fabric is heading.  And it all started with an old white bed sheet I got at the thrift store for less than $2.00.  If you want to see other pieces I've made with this same bed sheet, go here, here, here, here, here, and possibly my favorite here.  And it's obvious, I still have more of that same bed sheet.

The next day I decided to try an experiment I saw on my friend Patty's blog.  Patty had pounded some leaves into fabric.  Now I confess, I have pounded flowers before, but never leaves, and never on fabric.  So I was looking forward to this.

However, I was making a mess of these leaves because of the hammer.  I switched to the handle, which made the leaves veins a bit more noticeable,

but not much.  I was not at all pleased with the direction this was taking, so I stopped.  I felt I either needed different leaves, a different hammer, or maybe flowers to pound into this fabric.

This is the scan showing the leaves I managed to pound into the fabric.  Not sure what my next move will be, but as soon as the weather improves, I'll be back to play with more fabric, probably this very piece.  Any suggestions are always welcome.