Archive for the ‘Book Covers’ Category

More Playing with Inktense Pencils

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

After finishing my little Chickadees, I decided I needed to see what else I could do with my Inktense colored pencils. I sold out of my covered mini photo albums, or brag books in early December, and really need to get more made. The covers were made using sunprinted fabric or photo transfers along with whatever dyed or painted fabric I thought looked good with the focus piece.

Brag book- Set of 4

This photo above shows a little group of the books I finished last fall. I try to use my best sunprints for the focus fabrics on the fronts of the covers, but I have LOTS of prints that just don’t have that WOW factor…. They are either not very sharp, or otherwise pretty boring.

Cosmos Sunprint

This photo shows one of the “wishy-washy” sunprints. The fern printed OK, but the Cosmos flowers are pretty blurry. Also, there isn’t much contrast in the piece of fabric. I could jazz it up with stitching and thread, but decided this was one good “victim” to try my pencils on.

Cosmos with Pencil

Above is another sunprint from a similar batch after I outlined the flowers and centers with the Inktnse pencils. I used Fuchsia for the petals, and Sun Yellow for the centers. I lightly dampened the fabric just were I wanted to add color with water, and added the pencil. Since I love all things sparkly, I decided to see what happened if I used my iridescent medium over the pencil to finish things. I used very watered down medium over the flowers, then added some thicker pearl to the flower centers, dotted over the yellow. With the water just where I wanted the color, and careful placement of the medium, I got pretty sharp lines.

Maple Sunprints

This is a sunprint of a couple of Maple leaves on nearly black paint.

Penciled Maples

This photo above doesn’t do justice to these leaves, but here is what happened when I drew the veins in the Maple leaf sunprints done on black. I started by just adding water over the pencil, but since I was playing with sparkle, I decided to add some to these… The effect gives an impression of the sun shimmering off snow on a very cold day. I kept the pearlescent medium just in the leaf areas. The actual look is much softer than the photo.

Ginkgo Sunprint

Here is one of my Ginkgo leaf sunprints on black…..

Ginkgo Cover

I tried a similar idea with the Ginkgo sunprints. I added Fuschia colored veins with the pencil, then used the pearlescent medium that wasn’t as watered down as on the Maples. The thicker layer of paint nearly covers the color completely. The camera is also picking up a lot of shine…. in real life, at different angles, you see varying amounts of the pencil color.

Fern with Flowers

Here is what I ended up with when I dipped the Violet pencil in water, then scribbled over a small flower stamp I have. The stamp gave a faint outline that I then traced over to get more color. I again used very watered down pearlescent medium over the pencil, then thick medium for the centers. The flower centers are sparkly even though they look white here.

Album Covers in Progress

This photo shows some more of the sunprints I played with. A  couple more on black, where I added color, and other sunprints I added little bits of color to. I have used some of last Spring’s dyed fabric for the remainder of each cover. The pieces used here are pretty bright and pull colors from the pencil I added. It will be fun to see how these look when I get them finished.

One thing I discovered while starting these, is that the little sketch book I made and used for my bird sketches will fit just right in one of these covers. I didn’t really pay attention to the size of the book I was making- I just cut the heavy drawing paper I had and folded, but the pages ended up being 4″x6″… just the size of the photos that fit in the albums that go in these covers.

So far this year is beginning much more creatively than the past couple…. Now to get these albums  finished so I can list them in my Andrus Gardens Studio on ArtFire.

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Posted in Book Covers, New Projects | 7 Comments »

Back to Sunprinting and New Book Covers!

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

As I sit here on a dreary, cool day I am finally writing about and getting photos posted here of the first major batch of sunprinting I have done in a loonnnggg time during a hot, dry week the end of August. In this post I am going to hit a few highlights, and in a post on my Classroom Blog, I will have a more detailed post of the process.

Sunprints 8-31-10

Above is a photo of a pile of fabric from my second day of printing. In the past, I had done my sunprinting with mostly lighter colors. This time around, I wanted to give black and deep colors a try and got some great results! I did a couple of sunprints with black paint back in 2008 on just about the last day I could print that year. I used some of those prints in a black and white challenge quilt.

Forest Ferns, black & white Art Quilt by Sue Andrus

Forest Ferns

Here is the quilt I made then…. it had been traveling for a while and returned home earlier this year. Since doing this piece, I kept thinking that I wanted to play with more black paint, as the sunprints really seem to stand out much more on the black than they do with many colors vying for attention, too.

Ginkgos on Fabric finished

Here is one of the first pieces I did this session. I finally found where I had stored the Ginkgo leaves I collected last summer, and wanted to play with them. This piece has prints of Ginkgo, Maple, Nishiki Willow, Green Dragon (Arasaema) and Corydalis foliage with some Phlox florets. I love the effect of sea salt on the paint, so used that on most of my pieces, too.

Black with Feathers

This piece is the first I have done since 2006 using feathers. I just randomly layed them on the surface for an allover print. The more downy feathers make very different prints from the heavier ones. These feathers are from a package purchased at a craft store. I also “had” to add salt, too.

Black and Blue Sunprint 1

I used my Dye-Na-Flo paints fro Jacquard for this batch of prints. This paint is very thin, with high pigment load for deep colors and no plastic feel of the regular textile paints. For this one, I added some of the azure blue with the black. this piece had more Ginkgos with ferns, Little Leaf Linden (chewed by beetles), and a Green Dragon with Phlox florets. I had some trouble with my leaves curling while the paint dried, and found a way to prevent that which I explain in the leaf preserving classroom post.

Black and Red

Here is another piece with red added with the black… It gave a nice black cherry color.

Black and Green Sunprint

Here is one in green…. I played with some foamie cutouts of lizards and frogs along with the leaves and flowers.

Set of Black Book Covers

Here is what I used some of the black sunprints for. These are the first of the newest group of notebook and journal covers I have finished. I did up most of them with black & white or gray, but added some color with dyed fabric for a couple for something different. The Composition Books are available here in my Andrus Gardens Studio on Artfire.  The Mini Composition books and Memo Books are available here on Artfire.

Posted in Book Covers, Book Covers, Dyed or Painted Fabric, New Projects | 1 Comment »

Color in and Out of The Studio

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

I finally have gotten back to my studio for a little bit, scattering lots of colorful fabric pieces. I began a new project of making covers for various sizes of notebooks, journals, and brag books, from mini to more standard sizes. I have been using some of the fabrics I dyed last month along with sunprints on hand.

Pretty Pile of Book Covers in Progress

The colors remind me of some of the photos I have been taking of t he Spring flowers in my gardens.

Snow Glory Group

The first flowers to pop up in my front yard garden were the Snow Glories, My favorites because of the bright shade of blue- like a summer sky.

Deep Midnight Blue Fat Quarter

This fabric has lots of shades of blue, including shades similar to the Snow Glories.

Winter Aconite Blooms

These little Winter Aconite flowers opened up even while the foliage still looked frozen. These hide in my shade garden in the back yard, near the stone wall and bloomed even before the Snow Glories.

Japanese Pine with Snow

Even this plant does not have flowers, it looked so pretty with it’s last coating of snow for the season… almost flower-like. I love the look of the branch tips against the blue sky.

Blue, Green and More Dyed Fat Quarters

These fat quarters were scrunched in the same container. The shades of blue and green  with touches of yellow and fuchsia remind  me of gardens full of blooms.

Pulmonaria "Mrs. Moon"

These little beauties sometimes sneak into bloom and are nearly done before I see them in my back yard garden. I caught them just as they were opening their first buds. I love how they change from pink to blue as the flowers age.

Yard of Bright Dyed Fabric

The above yard is one of the brightest that I ended up with, using fuchsia, cerulean blue, and yellow.

White Daffodils with Yellow Centers

These Daffs seemed to bloom much sooner than usual with the warm, summer-like weather we had early.

Double Daffodils

These were not in my flower beds, but I wish I had some… They were in bloom on Easter Sunday…. So beautiful!

More Fat Quarters

This group of fabrics show another bright fat quarter with a soft mauve one and a pair that were done with the same colors.

Almond Tree Blossoms

These are still open, but I caught them at their peak for the photo. The almond tree is covered with these pink flowers this year.

Light Blue Fat Quarter

This fat quarter isn’t exactly the shade of the skies in my photos, but it is pretty and soft.

White Grape Hyacinth with View

I caught this little clump of white Muscari, or Grape Hyacinth, while in bloom. They are in my huge Maple tree garden and I usually miss them while in peak bloom. I was able to get the distant view of the mountains in the background.

Jenna in Easter Dress

This little “flower” is the hardest one to photograph… she doesn’t stop moving- granddaughter, Jenna.

Mini Composition Cover- Lavender Geranium

Here is one of the finished covers. This one is for a mini composition book. The size is just right for tucking into a purse and makes a really pretty way to dress up a little memo book to keep lists, ideas and more. Available in my Andrus Gardens Gift Items Studio on Artfire…. Link to Geranium Cover.

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Posted in Book Covers, Flowers and Gardens, inspirations, New Projects | 2 Comments »