First, in the midst of all the stashbusting I've been doing, let me start out with show n' tell of some new fabrics that have mysteriously made their way onto my shelves. I had nothing to do with it, I swear. First, the absolutely wonderful Alexander Henry Halloween line that I think is named "The Ghastlies." The main focus print I ordered is on backorder. I should have it in a few weeks. I'm not a huge fan of Halloween fabrics but I love this line!
Next, the beautiful "Big Poppy" set of coordinates from Michael Miller. I've got another one of this set coming--also on backorder. Boy, Hancocks of Paducah--you've got to order it the second you get the catalogue or they're out. BTW, those poppies live up to their name. They're huge!
OK, on to the Lutradur.... As I'd mentioned, my sister Dianne came up for the weekend over Memorial Day and we just had a great time messing around. Dianne's spent a lifetime playing with various art mediums, I'm a little more new to town. So her presence helped me cut loose and just have fun, and not worry about the results. After all, Lutradur is cheaper than fabric. So what if I end up tossing something that didn't work?
My first experiment was with gesso again, but this time I intentionally played with texture. I got it as saturated as possible and then more or less finger painted in it. Some texture did come out in the finished product when I printed my image, but you couldn't see the finger swirls I'd put in there. Mostly, the plastic bag it dried on left its mark and wiped out everything else. (Can't show you the print. It's my creativity challenge!)
Dianne also played with the gesso, but in hers, she added some bronze Lumiere paint. The result was sort of a pinkish-brown piece but the sparkly from the Lumiere didn't really show once it dried, for some reason. We did learn that the gesso mixes nicely with the paints, though. Definitely some interesting possibilities there.
Here's the original version of the photo Dianne printed on this treated Lutradur. (That's our grandma--isn't she a looker?)
Dianne had photoedited this using a scan of fabric to create the frame.
Now, print the photo on the treated Lutradur, and here are the results. The fabric print in the background gets washed out, but there's some great sort of white whispy things going on, almost like Grandma is sitting behind a netting.
We also played with a variety of paints. Here are some scraps I'd trimmed off other Lutradur pieces. We didn't coat them with anything--just painted.
This one Dianne used a crimson and a brown acrylic fabric paint.
The front is a nice blend of the two. I don't think she used much water on this--I think it's mostly paint. We were using sponge brushes, by the way. I remember she seemed to be doing more "pouncing" than brushing on this one.
What's sometimes even cooler, though, is flipping over what you've done (when it's dry), and seeing what's happening on the reverse. Here's the flip side of the crimson and brown strip.
Could do some fun things with that.
On this strip, I was playing with the bronze Lumiere, gold Lumiere, and the crimson acrylic, but using a lot of water to see how it affected the blending. So one end I did pretty much straight Lumiere, then did more of a wash, then did some wash with crimson, then washed another Lumiere, then did some blending...then dribbled some water over it to see if I could get droplets.... Basically this was just an experimental strip with no expectations. But it turned out sort of neat.
And again, the reverse. Although this one had an accident when it blew over the top of the gesso-treated Lutradur that was still very sticky. But even the accident created a neat effect. (It left a whitish spot, almost like a resist, on the front.)
Dianne also treated a larger piece with the matte gel medium and printed a photo on it. I don't seem to have a photo of the treated Lutradur but it looks the same as in one of my other Lutradur posts, so that's not particularly important. But here's the original photo she had (her dog--great old guy).
And here's what he looks like treated on the matte gel-treated Lutradur.
Here are the front and back sides of another one that Dianne treated using gesso and paint mixed. But in this one, she dabbed it on rather than brushing, and got a birch tree effect.
(Oops, I think I rotated the photo wrong. Tip your head to the right and look at it sideways to see the birch trees.)
And the reverse, which looks more like an animal print. It looked even more so before it also flipped over in the wind. (We were drying everything outside hoping it would go more quickly--which it did, but we had to weight everything down with a bunch of my son's pop cans.)
Beware--even after the treated Lutradur is thoroughly dry, ink jet printer ink takes longer to dry on treated Lutradur than on other papers.
Ick.
Both of our hands were covered with a variety of what were originally pretty colors, but when all mixed together into a fingerprint didn't make an attractive presentation.
Dianne did another couple of prints but for some reason, I didn't take pictures of them. I think when she was working on those, I was going hot and heavy on my creativity challenge project.
For which I'm only going to give you a little hint.
