Merry Christmas

I have slacked off a bit on making holiday cards for family and friends. This year I decided to make one for my blog so it will be sent out to everyone in the blogosphere. I'm still a bit obsessed with weaving paper.

Here are the steps to make this card:

I started by quickly painting two pieces of watercolor paper. One paper using Blicks Artist Acrylic in Green Light Permanent.

The other piece of paper was painted with Blicks Artist Acrylic Emerald Green. I like the washy look of both pieces of paper.

By the way, I both brands of acrylic paint gives good results. I wanted two different color greens and these paints are the ones I had on hand in my stash.

After the paper had dried, I put each piece face down on my cutting board. You could put the paper face up but I wanted to hold each piece in place with blue tape and didn't want to risk the tape pulling any of the paint off the paper. Then I cut the papers in strips.

The next step is to weave the weft into the warp. This time around I started up the top and weaved down horizontally. With the other two paper weaving projects, one was woven right to left (click here) and the other one was woven from the middle out (click here).

After I finished weaving, I put a light coat of matte medium on the back to adhere the strips together before removing it from the cutting board.

The finished woven paper.

I cut out the tree and glued it to a blank card. The final touch was a silver star.

Happy Holidays!

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2 sided woven painted piece #2

I really enjoyed working on the first 2 sided woven painted piece so I started another one. This time I didn't paint the paper beforehand.
 
I started by putting white watercolor paper in the shredder. One piece shredded lengthwise (warp) and the other width (weft).
 

 

I started to weave the vertical paper strips from the middle out. Hopefully, this will keep the whole piece squared. The first 2 sided woven painted piece was slightly uneven.

Close up of my technique to weave the pieces.

 Once the piece is completely woven then I machine stitched around the edges.

Here is the woven piece stitched, trimmed and ready to be painted!

I didn't take any photos while painting (and repainting) both sides. The first few go arounds with painting each side didn't work because (1) the paint was too thin and seeped through to the other side and (2) the monoprinting was illegible. I finally decided to lightly painted both sides with a narrow sponge brush then stenciled onto top. I like the final artwork but I prefer the first 2 sided woven piece technique of painting the papers then weaving them.

 

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Photo Friday

The light reflecting on the side of the garage caught my eye. I think it was caused by the sun bouncing off a window across the alley way from the garage. No matter what caused it, I think it's a cool effect. 

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Tie Dye and Instructions

I was organizing my storage unit and found some old tie dye samples with instructions. There wasn't a date on any of them but my guess the samples are at least 20 years old. The notes are a bit messy with some misspelled words but I'm happy that I thought about keeping records.

This sample is accordion folded then tied with rubber bands.
  

 

This sample is, also, accordion folded then folded again using a "S" fold before tying with rubber bands.

This sample is gathered from the center then tied with rubber bands.
 

This sample is folded into a triangle 3 times then folded into itself before tying with rubber bands.

 This last sample was tied into itself so no rubber bands were used.
 

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Photo(s) Friday

I'm naturally drawn to repeating patterns. These cinder/concrete block designs would work perfectly as stamps.

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More Zazzle.com Greeting Cards!

I added a few more greeting card designs for my store on zazzle.com
 

Graffiti Happy Card by MiaBloomDesigns
Make a card online at zazzle

 

Graffiti Merry Card by MiaBloomDesigns
Shop for a card with zazzle.com

 

Graffiti Thanks Card by MiaBloomDesigns
Make custom notecards at zazzle.com 

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Photo(s) Friday

It's refreshing to see fun, creative homes among the track homes and McMansions.

I love that the owners weren't afraid to paint their house pink and turquoise. The colors are actually brighter than these pictures.

The owner(s) of this house must be skiiers!

 

 

 

For some reason this house reminds me of a ship/boat/yacht.

 

Awww...the storybook house.

 

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2 sided woven painted artwork #1

I recently visited two paper/fiber exhibits that really inspired me -  "Paperwork" at Craft and Folk Art Museum and "Fiberlicious" at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. There was some of the same artists in both exhibits. One artist of these artists was Lorenzo Hurtago Segovia. His 2 sided woven painted pieces really resonated with me. I decided to try to create artwork inspired by his but not copying it.

I started by putting 2-sided painted piece through the paper shredder. The paper got jammed in the shredder. The tip is to line up the paper at the top of the shredder before turning it on. Initially, I turned on the shredder then put the paper in. So, the second 2-sided painted paper (bronze/yellow/rust on 1 side and green on the other) shredded perfectly. I had a second painted paper that was only painted on one side with a solid grey. I decided to shred it to see how it would look with the 2-sided painted piece.  

I used blue painters tape to secure the 2-sided painted paper to the grid cutting mat horizontally (warp). Then I lighted applied matte medium to the 1-sided grey painted paper strips as I woven them vertically (weft) starting from the left side. The matte medium helped to keep the grey strips in place.

After I finished weaving all the strips, I machine stitched around the edges to secure the piece. Then trimmed the edges. You can see a brief look at the opposite side the piece.

The green and white side seemed a bit plain. I loosely cut out a stencil with elliptical shape. First, I stenciled a light grey then offset the stencil before adding a darker grey.

The random shapes gives some interest to this side of the artwork.
 

This is the other side finished.
 

I really liked way this project turned out. I wasn't able to weave the weft pieces right up against the warp but I like the way it looks with some space inbetween. My mind is thinking of other woven pieces. To be continued...

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