Art Play with a Friend



Last year we escaped to Florida - remember all that snow, ice and nasty weather we had?  I got to spend some time with my good friend Shiela  and have some serious art fun.

Shiela (yes, that's how her mom spelled it) is a fantastic artist and that a world-class collector of supplies.  She had an old wool blanket in her stash that she felted by washing in hot water and drying on high heat.  She also had about twenty bottles of old Plaid spray mists - really old, as none of the spray pumps were operational !  Put the two together and let the fun begin!

We spread the blanket out on the front lawn and started pouring on the paint.  Cars driving by slowed down to see what on earth was going on and a couple of brave souls stopped to ask .This was a seriously messy operation.  We did wear gloves, but still somehow ended up with hands covered in paint.  I  managed to keep the paint off my white shirt - not a smart choice for a paint-pouring project!

We cut the colored squares apart and left them to dry in the Florida sun.  The wool took the color up wonderfully and our random pours produced some great variegated color patterns.

My blanket squares have been asleep in their box until last week.  You know those twisted fabric flowers that are all over blog-land and Pinterest?  I decided to try making them with strips of our dyed blanket.  These flowers are so easy and in case I'm not the last person on the planet to try them, here are some directions.  Since the wool is pretty hefty, I cut strips about an inch wide but did not fold them over - I just rolled the single layer wool into flowers.  I used a cotton remnant to add some more color - here you can see through the fuzziness how the rolling goes.  Hot glue every now and then to hold it all together.

 I used my flowers (and a few leaf shapes cut out of the green wool) to embellish an inexpensive wooden frame from Michael's. 





I made a collage out of white-ish scraps of paper and washed some diluted white paint over everything to  unify all the scraps.  The tiny little colored squares on the left are from the reservoir of a square paper -punch - pretty cool! 

Next time maybe I'll try making flowers by cutting out individual petals....oh, the possibilities!