Day Two at Houston

Day 2 at Houston I took a class. If you ever go to Houston Quilt Festival there is a class for every technique imaginable. You can bead, applique, paint, quilt, and best of all to me this year - mixed media. The class was an all day class hosted by Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine and the instructor was Lesley Riley of the magazine. It was a perfect opportunity to PLAY and have FUN!!! Use mixed media things in the right way and not have to buy everything that I wanted to try.

We painted on watercolor paper, fabric and Lutradur. Let me first of all say Lutradur is the bomb and paints so well. It adheres to Angelina fibers and can be burned and melted in a controled way. Just a plug for Lesley. She has book coming out in January, 2009 entitled "fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur" A must have book to play and use this wonderful stuff in your art.

There were several other products I was introduced to that are so versatile and fun. TAP is a transfer artist paper that can run through your copy machine. You use a gel medium to transfer from the paper to fabric, Lutradur, watercolor paper,etc. The transfers come out in color or in black and white depending on how you printed them. The lady in dark green was transferred to cloth. The flowers are done with a molding paste, stencil and watercolor paper. Let them dry and then paint them. The little shapes are a combination of Kunin felt, chiffon, Lutradur Wonder Under together, burned, accented with gold and cut into shapes. I want to put a backing on this piece and do some beads.

Lesley told us something that I appreciated about gold - she said "it is only an accent, it should not be your main color". Another new item I used, that I had never used before and will use again is oil pastels. They give you controled color and can be blended with just a damp application of water. You can use them to color the TAP and then use the gel medium to transfer onto your base.

The picture at the very top of my page is all of the leftovers that I still can play with on another day.
Still more to come about my wonderful trip.