Saturday, April 13, 2019

Clinging to a dream


In my quest to recycle and repurpose trash or recyclables, I have sadly fallen down on my support of Wendy from Wendy's Art and Craft Journal who is our host at Art Journal Journey this month.  Her theme is Having Fun and I can say at times I had fun, while at other times I was frustrated while trying to create this latest entry.

I had excess paint left on my pages when I created the resist part of my Second Thursday tutorial a few days ago. Since I hate wasting anything, including even inexpensive craft paint, I grabbed a sheet of 110 lb card stock and laid down paint on the substrate.

To clean my brush, I also colored a wet wipe, those translucent wipes many stores in the U.S. give out to clean your cart handles.  I always keep mine, so that's why I have this one.  Most people throw them in the trash basket provided by the store.  But free to me means free art supplies.

Some of you will remember in June last year, I attempted to show three ways to use napkins in your art.   The pellon/wonder under and freezer paper both worked marvelously, but the cling wrap was a total bust.  Recently, however, several of my art friends have used this technique to create backgrounds that produced incredible results.

The object is to have WET paint on your substrate, then lay scrunched cling wrap on your page and allow the paint to dry.  Since some of my paint wasn't wet when I added the cling wrap, I got mixed results.  The wet wipe, on the other hand turned out great.

You can see the areas that were still wet when I added the cling wrap.  The navy paint worked, but it was too dark to show the effect.



No matter how I tried to show the effects the cling wrap had on the navy paint, it simply didn't photograph it well.

Only a small portion of the silver showed any effects.

Additionally, the card stock buckled and refused to straighten, regardless of the days and days I left it under a very heavy book.

My art friend Kathy took a class in her home town.  I had given her some of my leftover copper from a project I was working on at the time.  This is from 2005, so I'm sure I've never shown it.  She brought all the additional supplies she hadn't used and helped me put this together.  It was originally intended to be a card, but was so heavy, I would have needed extra postage to send it.

In order to reduce some of the buckling, I sewed around the edge of the page and the edges of the two elements, too. 

I had a bit of trouble with my thread breaking, so changed it.








Here is where I ran out of bobbin thread.  When I did, I realized the top and bottom thread were different weights, so I ended up changing it again when I added the wet wipe to the page.


For Day 13 of 22, I began by recycling leftover cling wrap to provide a bit of texture to essentially a "mop up" of left over paint.  I did the same to a wet wipe, free from the grocery store.  Next, I added the old card that was decorated with the help of my friend Kathy.  All were held in place using three different variegated threads, which were new, as was the card stock.

As I said in the beginning, I got a bit frustrated that the texture technique didn't work better, and I had all kinds of trouble with my sewing.  But in the end I had fun naming the piece Clinging to a Dream.  Thank you for allowing me to share this piece with all its warts and missteps.   I am so pleased to get such good responses to my recycling efforts.   You have no idea how happy this makes me.  Also, please join me at Art Journal Journey, too.

19 thoughtful remarks:

Helen said...

I love the background stripey piece! enjoy your continued recycling/re-using!

Valerie-Jael said...

It's turned out very well even if you did have some mishaps on the way to the finish. Enjoy your day. Valerie

WendyK said...

It has turned out beautifully, and your sewing is great. The whole piece is lovely, I really like it. Thank you for sharing.
Hugs Wendy

Meggymay said...

I love how this recycling turned out for you Elizabeth, it is a fabulous page and you can see the effects you got using the cling film and wipes [ I enlarged the photos]
Have a good Saturday.
Yvonne xx

Cath Wilson said...

Navy blue is such a strong colour to work with Elisabeth but you pulled it off beautifully. I love the end result. The stitching is superb and those copper embellishments are wonderful! I have quite a bit somewhere from when we used to stamp it... Love your thread embellishment, too.
Great to see a failed experiment and especially when you made it good in the end! It's always good to see things we're not happy with as well as the ones we are...shows our humanity, lol.
Thank you for sharing this - it's really encouraging. You've also given me a longing to get out my sewing machine....h'mm! Where could I fit it in? It hasn't seen the light of day for some years :-(
Cath x

froebelsternchen said...

I love how this turned out Elizabeth! Fun- tastic for AJJ!
Happy day! Hugs, Susi

CJ Kennedy said...

the cling wrap technique works best with watercolors, but you got some great texture with your craft paints. The entire piece looks great. I especially love that pen element.

RO said...

This turned out really great,and I love the coloring. Hugs...RO

Anonymous said...

I love the recycling use, its a beautiful piece , the copper really makes it pop,

My name is Erika. said...

This came out amazing Elizabeth. It doesn't matter that the plastic wrap didn't create tons of texture because the whole page looks fantastic. Maybe if you scrunched the plastic wrap? But anyhow, I think this is amazing! Happy weekend. Hugs-Erika

Divers and Sundry said...

I'm impressed with how this turned out, and I can see the effect the cling wrap had. I really like it, having only tried it once, and I look forward to further attempts :) I like your design/arrangement of the elements into your final piece. Wonderful!

Cindy McMath said...

This is lovelyElizabeth! If you need to keep paint wet for a project like this you can add a bit of a medium called a retarder. This type of medium slows the drying time. Because I sell some of my work, I use a commercial product, but I did a search for this and found there are lots of ways to make this yourself.

craftytrog said...

It can be so frustrating when things don't photograph well! The end result looks great though!
Alison x

kathyinozarks said...

wow your end result turned out fabulous I really love it-I know nothing about techniques like this one so I really enjoy reading about them-I may need to give some of your tutorial a try. I have some paints now too

Rita said...

Pretty background and I love the copper embellishments! :)

Mia said...

Really amazing, Elizabeth!!!!!! You always inspire me, my friend.

Caty said...

What a so so GORGEOUS Art page Elizabeth !! I love love the result of the background, really wonderful, the textures are great, and the colours too. I like very much the sewing, and the card with all those lovely embellishments. Love the word ! You always amaze me !
I wish you a very nice day,
Big hugs, Caty

Jeanie said...

I'd say you made up for lost time with this piece, Elizabeth. It really is terribly striking. And don't you love working with cling wrap? It's always an interesting and unique finish.

pearshapedcrafting said...

What a brilliant piece of art you finally have! I love the way you stitched it! Chrisx