Be careful what you wish for, the old saying goes, and during the past week the warning hit home with a vengeance.
We wished for sunshine in order to take a second stab at sun painting and we got it – we just forgot to add a stipulation putting a cap on the heat and humidity.
But we survived and, gripes about the weather aside, we had much better luck with our new sun painting projects.
Those who read our July 9 column will remember that we tried sun painting – a method of painting fabric and drying it in the bright sunshine with masks (items that cover the paint) in place to form a design – with disappointing results.
But we decided that it wasn’t the product’s fault, gave the project a second chance, and here’s what we learned:
* Wash your cloth well to remove sizing before applying paint.
* Use objects that will lie flat as masks or you may end up with a poor or undefined image.
* If you do use yarn, string or ribbon, weight the ends down (off the fabric) so the pieces will stay in place. We cut the pieces about two inches longer than the fabric piece and weighted the edges down with some metal bars.
* Make sure sunlight does not touch your painted cloth before you add your masks.
And here’s how we created this week’s projects:
Bandanas
We were pleased with the way our two bandanas turned out – especially the starburst tie-dye example – once we put the above tips into play.
To make our starburst bandana, we tied pieces of the bandana with string at random intervals, then applied yellow, red, green, blue and purple paint in no particular pattern.
The bandana had a lot of white space, probably because we left it in the sun for quite a long time to dry.
When dry, we clipped off the string and ironed it. The paint and sunshine worked together to make a very pleasant piece.
To make a yellow and green bandana, we used knit/crochet ribbon and iron-on patches as masks. The patches did curl up a bit and the result was fuzzy or uneven images, but overall the finished product was fine with us.
Small greeting cards
Four greeting cards with the white borders were made using card stock included in a kit called Sun Printing by Pebeo (cost $20, plus or minus a few cents). Sun paints are available either in the kit or individual bottles.
To make the orange and green cards, we used tiny star-shaped pasta as our mask; for the blue moon and stars, we used small star and round craft mirror pieces; and for the multicolored plain card, we used coarse salt.
We cut the fabric pieces to size and glued them inside the cards, and used the mirror pieces to add a bit of extra sparkle to the moon and stars card.
Large greeting cards
We were delighted with the effect given by using coarse salt, and we used the technique on all four of our larger cards. For card stock, we used poster board cut to the size of a large greeting card and simply trimmed the edges of the fabric pieces with pinking shears and glued the fabric to the card.
To make our two butterfly cards, we experimented with color combinations and used butterfly patches and salt as masks. We particularly liked the way the darker card turned out, as the butterfly ended up looking rather bat-like against a purple night sky with splashy yellow stars scattered about.
The blue and purple card with the diamond shapes was created by cutting pieces of heavy cotton thread (used for knitting and crocheting) and laying them diagonally across the fabric. (Don’t forget to anchor the edges with something heavy so the threads won’t blow out of place in a breeze.)
And finally, our “Blue Lagoon” card just kind of happened. We were playing around with colors and ended up with what looked like an island against a bright yellow sun with the blue sky and a blue lagoon above and below it, respectively. The coarse salt as with the butterfly cards gave the finished product an interesting, grainy texture.
OK, so some things are in the eye of the beholder and you may not see a lagoon, but if you get creative with the paints and masks, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you come up with.
Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.
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