Thursday, March 24, 2011

Butterfly cosmetic bags


I made these for my new Etsy shop. They are hand painted on silk. I used both plain and black resist for the design. The black resist was much harder to wash out and left little black bits here and there, so watch out for this. Also I think I maybe should have used a different background color because this one washes out the butterfly too much. I meant to use a more contrasting green which would have been better, but it got bluer.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Sea Turtle Silk Tie

I painted this silk tie. It faded a little more than I would like, perhaps I should not have saved the fix for the second application of dye but mixed another fresh batch. I'm finding that to be a big problem with silk painting, getting the dye to really fix even when you do all the steps and wait full days for dyes and resists to dry and iron and use fixative solutions and do the hokey pokey and everything. Blue is really resistant to sticking. But it really is a satisfying art in that in that if it all works out you have a really beautiful piece of fine silk that people love to touch and look at. The subject is an endangered green turtle with a starfish knot placement holder. (I just made that up :) .)