Poppies and SOC rejects help finish a visual journal cover

Some of you may have seen my previous post, where I showed the cover to my scrappy journal I made for my dear friend Kathy.

I used my handmade poppy stencil, and reworked the poppies to make them look a tad more realistic.  Unfortunately, we live and learn, and I learned the matte finish I applied after I applied my pan pastel (as an aside, my dear friend Kathy bought it for me) ran into the blue reinker and made it even darker than it had been.  Lesson learned.

Not to be deterred, I decided to dye some more fabric, this time using oatmeal as a resist.  From left: washed and torn cotton bed sheet, spoon that belongs in my craft room, cooked oatmeal*, painter's tape, plastic to cover the work table.

*The first time I used oatmeal as a resist, I used uncooked oatmeal.  I had no idea how to mix it, and when I did, a decent portion of the uncooked oatmeal fell off the fabric when I placed it on the line.

I decided I would not make that mistake again, so this time, I cooked the oatmeal.  Remember, this is NOT to be consumed by humans once you have opened and used it in a craft project.

The cooked oatmeal was sticky, and stuck better, but

certainly didn't go as far as the last batch I made.

I only got one sheet of oatmeal fabric resist this time.

Now it was time to play the waiting game.

The next morning, the fabric was dry, and I got started before the sun got too hot.  Like before, I used Staz-on re-inkers, colors of your choice and 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (also called "Rubbing Alcohol" in the US, but do not use 70%).


Once the reinkers and alcohol were applied, they dried almost instantly.  However, the oatmeal was still wet from the process, so I once again allowed them to dry overnight.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos.  I was under a bit of a time crunch, but you can see how I removed the oatmeal by seeing this post.  Sadly, this time, the cooked oatmeal was a bit harder to remove, even with the jet spray.  I had to run the final piece through my washing machine to make sure the last tiny bits were removed.  As with the uncooked oatmeal, the colors were much duller than I anticipated.

But now it was finally time to sew these pieces together.  In a way, I was a bit sad I had covered up all the oatmeal resist fabric.

I combined a failed SOC attempt with an image of a SOC "cabbage rose."  It was actually the first piece I stamped, and when I looked around for some scrap fabric, this was all I had.  I knew I'd use it some way, but never expected to use it this soon.  I used a colored pencil to draw around the cat image.  Even Bleubeard approved for once!

And because he approved, he allowed his approval to show by being part of the handmade gift.

Here is the front scanned so you can see its true colors.

And even though I believe the "better half" of this blog is more handsome than this, it's still a good caricature of Bleubeard.

Thanks as always, for dropping by.  Be sure to watch this space to see the contents of the inside of this 98 page journal.  I promise, it will be soon.