Beth's Experimenting With Pastels and Inktense Blocks

First up is a chlorine resist...".I couldn't get the detail from the stencil so I ended up with black fabric and orange blobs. Saturday I then used fabric paint thin with fabric medium and was able to get more precise detail. Then Sunday I used my metallic paint sticks and was able to get the detail that you see here. "

"T- inks on prewashed white muslin again I had too much moisture so there was running. I heat set it and then used metallic paint sticks to get the detail."

"Prewashed white muslin with black ink again too much moisture A lot of running heat set and then I went over it with oil paint sticks metallic  and I love it !"












These are two pieces Beth worked on last Friday at our play date!

"I felt it was too dark to work with my Inktense pencils so I chose to use oil sticks I love it. It is commercial fabric."

"This is a piece I originally  worked on in Oscoda, Michiga.  it is oil sticks with veined stencils. Nancy lent me the next stencil to go over the existing leaves I fused. The transparency really makes the piece look better."

Inktense Experiments

As I mentioned at Beth's house I have found a lot of information about Inktense Pencils/Blocks on the internet.
One of the best IMHO about how to use them, with what and the durability is:
http://lindasteelequilts.blogspot.com/2012/08/playing-with-inktense-pencils.html

I did put a fabric medium (Liquitex)  over the white base cloth I did with stencils Friday. I believe it is slightly lighter (hard to tell as photos differ depending on the light). At this point it is very stiff. I will iron it and do a gentle washout and see what happens.

The black piece I was so disappointed in is even more of a disappointment. I used the same fabric medium and it made the marks much lighter. After it dried I wet it and did more color on it over texture items. I am not at all in love with it. Nancy, it is not nearly as lovely as the piece you gave me. It is drying now but I don't think that is going to make any difference.

I am guessing my original thoughts were right and since these are inks/dyes you can't cover black or dark colors not matter what you do with Inktense??? Prove me wrong!

April showers of Inktense blocks and paint stiks!

Beth hosted our April play date!  First up, Bonnie shared pictures of her play date (without us, as she is back in Michigan!).  But she did have wine and cookies!  We only had cookies baked by Beth but they were really, really good so guess we didn't miss the wine (much!).

This set Bonnie created was cotton velvet, poly satin and some other poly fabric w/texture and plain cotton w/a mask of painter's tape.

And these are poly fabric Bonnie stamped using some of the same technique(s) above.

I used oil pastels to add another layer on previous dyed/stamped pieces. 

The Ginkgo leaves were a stencil that I placed oil pastel along the edge of the stencil then rubbed on the outside of the stencil and then pushed the pastel onto the fabric.

The 2nd piece, I used a cardboard leaf and, same technique as above, just rubbing oil pastel along the outside edge of the leaf, then rubbed the edge onto the fabric.

Not great results here.  I used Inktense blocks rubbing over a leaf plate. I did dampen the fabric the rubbed the block over the plate.   But it's a good start for more layering of another technique!