Time to experiment

As you might have gathered from my previous posts I can be a rather strange person. One of my quirks is that I buy some of the weirder and more wonderful materials and then won't try them out, "because it would be a shame to waste them". And since these materials will never amount to anything without some serious experimentation, they end up in my "one-day-I-will"-cupboard.Being in dolly limbo after all the big challenges, I needed something fun and uncomplicated to play with.....so I decided that it was about time I lost some of my weird quirks......and here is experiment no.1.

Oh.....can't tell you about experiment no.1 before telling you about another quirk....I never keep any of the patterns I make or ideas that I come up with.

Once they are made that's it......over the years I've bought a pile of folders with all the right intentions, but they always got filled up with stuff, but never with my stuff. So experiment no. 1 was intended to kill 2 quirks in one go...make a folder cover and use some previously unused strange materials.....

Well here it is........

No doubts who this folder belongs to!

The border is made from lutradur, first painted in a shimmery gray and then painted with some copper enamel I had laying about. After that I ironed on some Angelina fibers (he that's two experiments in one!)

The interesting proporties of lutradur show when it's heated. So where it that blasted heatgun.......hmm.....

after 2 hours searching and much frustration I was so fed up that I picked up the whole piece and held it over the stove. This created an interesting effect called......fire!

Hmmm....maybe a bit more distance from the flames.....(he, it is an experiment!)

So instead of my nice square piece of lutradur, that should show some delicate lacing effects I ended up with this....frame???

So I had a frame now....but what to put in it?

I wanted to try a fabric portrait for a while, but as I could envision the repercussions if I would mess up, I decided the safest way to go was to use my own portrait....and there you have it....a folder that I never have to write my name on, an experiment with lutradur and angelina fibers and an experiment in fabric portraits! No I just have to write it all down and put it in the folder.

Something a little different......autumn leaves

I really had to come up with an idea for a long overdue present.
Jean Bernard who's not only a fabulous artist, a great teacher, but also a very nice person, sent me a box of the most scrumptious fabrics a few months ago and I still hadn't thought of anything I could sent her, seeing as she is not a doll collector.....
But after getting both the Hoffman challenge doll and the Treasures of the gypsy doll out of the way I ran out of excuses and had to put my thinking cap on.
If there is anything Jean is good at it is to pry people out of their boxes, so it couldn't be anything box standard. Then I thought of the face molds I won in the silent auction at CIFI '08, Jean donated a whole pack of her face molds and instructional cd's. And ideas started to flow..... and here is the result....a pin.....

There are tiny beads, pewter arm charms, a California jasper cabochon, copper leaf, some kind of weird bandage-like fabric, unspoon silk, glitters, paints and glue.
And yeah, there is some stitching there too!

What can I say........I just really hope she likes it!