What Else Percolated

Apologies for not the greatest photo . . .

Towards the end of summer, I think my creative brain had rested enough that it was starting to fire again. Even before my palette musing I had another one of those accidental juxtapositions of fabric that resulted in a perfect pairing. Thing is, the two fabrics had been sitting a foot or two from each other in separate stacks on the floor for months. I'd seen them numerous times as I stepped over them or glanced that direction while sitting at my laptop. Eventually, yet another glance down that narrow piece of floor between work table and storage cabinets suddenly made the connection that the batik with mariner compass designs provided the design solution for that piece of snow-dyed fabric. I've always liked it but knew I needed to add something more to it, and had only thought about how it could be quilted. Ding dong - that compass in the batik looks the perfect size to fit in the upper left corner if cut out and appliqued in place, and has the right colors to go with those in the snow dye. Well, THAT was exciting to discover. (Don't ask how soon I'll follow up.)

More recently, I found I couldn't let this faux leather from paper bags technique go without giving it another try for better results. This time I experimented with both brown and white paper bags. On the white one I used acrylic paints which moved and blended once laid down and worked with a wet brush. Much better results than with the Art Graf. On the brown one I used several shades of blue from a Marabu Fashon spray set. I wasn't too keen on the nozzles on these spray bottles - did not give a fine spray and were prone to sudden unexpected big drops. But it was a quick way to get some color on the paper.

These still look more like hand-dyed fabric than leather to me, but I'd been doing a little more research and learning that most of the time, people were rubbing additional layers over the paper to either create depth or highlight the wrinkles. I planned to use one of these on my next bookbinding effort so tucked that info away for later - my usual mulling process.