Art Therapy

And the Art goes on…. Slowly…..  With the body still terribly misbehaving, I keep having more bad than good days, but I am feeling good that I have been able to get back to creating at least a little bit nearly every day again…. even if it is only for a few minutes.  This week I have taken over the kitchen table as an art space for playing with some of my new goodies from the ArtFire contest that I won and showed in the previous post.

I tried the Adirondack Inks again, this time with some homemade applicators that I made from wood scraps from Ken’s workshop (I did have to cut them smaller- thankfully I am not too afraid of the chop saw). I glued on velcro and since I can’t find any arcrylic felt around here (I know I must have some Somewhere), I used some wool felt… Acrylic felt might be better??  From watching numerous videos and reading tutorials, etc. I know the inks do best on glossy paper or other non porous surfaces (like my buttons). The only glossy paper I have on hand is inkjet photo paper and some Crayola Sparkle paper. I also ended up with some “new” glossy paper to try… Just as I was leaving my quilting retreat, I was gifted with a bunch of 2012 calenders featuring guild member’s quilts with “My Dream House” on the cover.

Yea, I got the cover, but the photo was awful… the color was totally off…Ikkk… I guess if you don’t know what it is supposed to look like it might not be so bad?  The calenders were to be sold at our guild’s show, Fall 2011 but flooding cancelled the show and lots of calenders are still lurking in boxes. There is a lot of glossy paper in these calenders to play with, but I  need to cover up the quilts first since I don’t want them as part of my art. I found using leftover white eggshell finish wall paint is working well as a primer without taking away the gloss.

The first paper I tried was the photo paper which is for inkjet printing. It is not the best because of the coating on the paper to allow for  the printer inks to work on them. If I worked quickly, the colors went on fine, but if I spent too much time in an area, the coating wanted to lift off. I also am using plain alcohol instead of a blending solution, so that might make a difference.  Using lots of alcohol with the inks helps to spread them.  The sparkle paper had the same problem with the surface coating for inkjet printing.

In the photo above, The blue and purple paper is a piece of the calender paper with inks applied with applicator and also dropped on, making the circles of color. The alcohol inks spread over the painted calender paper much easier than over the inkjet paper. I also spritzed this paper with alcohol, giving some more speckles. The white was done with the soles of a pair of shoes painted with an acrylic stain blocking primer… The alcohol ink colors bleed right through the primer, which is great for art, but not for walls, etc. The shimmer on the green paper is from some Pearl-Ex powder mixed with alcohol, water and a bit of metallic paint.

Ahhh, the Art Therapy shoes… 🙂  A little diversion from paper and inks…  After seeing a post about the Kick off your Heels fundraiser on the quiltart list, I found some really fun shoe art that others have done. (Follow the link to see the call for Art Shoes that are being auctioned off to raise money for women’s heart care research, and some really neat shoes.)  Something clicked in my head and I found myself purchasing these wild heels to play with for some more art therapy (ideas are popping up everywhere again!). I am not sure if these shoes will be done in time to try to enter them into the auction, but time will tell.

Inked papers, including a calender page I did in the wee hours one morning when my body wouldn’t let me sleep, surround the shoes for their before photo above.  The calender page behind the shoes wasn’t primed first since I was just distracting myself in the near dark, and a quilt and lines for notes are showing through the lavender color. More layers of paint or whatever should do enough to hide the quilt, just leaving random little peeks of colors.

I am pretty sure that the primer I used will hold onto the shoes well and allow further layers to stay… It was the hardest stuff to get off my hands if it dried at all… Gloves would have helped, but when using art as therapy, I tend to just grab a brush or whatever and go to it without thinking much… I really like the look of these shoes without their spots… I think there may be a layer of fabric or colored paint over the primer,  so the lurking spots won’t show…  I am thinking there will be lots of blue flowers on these… just not exactly sure how things will end up exactly… I will see where they lead me…. They are sitting on a couple paper towels that got colored with fabric paint while trying to rejuvenate a faded bathing suit. A favorite shade of mine.

Back to paper….

The papers and fabric above were done with this month’s Arts in the Cards theme- Kiwi, in mind.

My Kiwi art cards are quite a bit different from what I usually do… I use my new circle and scalloped circle dies from my prize from ArtFire. The brown is a suede-like fabric that made me think of fuzzy kiwi skins.  Just a touch of bright yellow was used to add a real pop of color, and some dotted tape I had added some “seeds”. To see what the others in the group have done, check out the Arts in the Cards Blog.

My kitchen table is pretty covered up….  Papers in various stages of play, loose calender pages I am using under things to catch drips, the Art Therapy shoes, and my paints, inks, pens and more are here, ready to be played with…. Keeping things out like this makes it easy to just work a few minutes at a time when I need an escape or need to work on a project  with a time limit.  Having the sink handy makes this a better workspace for these messy projects instead of my studio.  We just can’t use the table for it’s intended purpose for now…

Something else I am working on is a project using a new craft supply for C&T Publishing… I am not sure how much I should show now, but here are some flowers I die cut and tried to color with the alcohol inks… that didn’t work, so I painted over with fabric paint I was using for another project.

This photo of the Maple Tree Garden was taken a week ago… there is no snow left now except for the little bits of new flakes falling here and there…. Garden Therapy will have to wait a while since it is to be really cold for the near future…  Maybe I can get Ken to get the ornamental grasses cut before things start to grow again…  Until things warm up, I will get my therapy from art indoors….   This post is linked to “Off the Wall Fridays”