Fibre Fling 5 coming soon!

If you live in the Ottawa area please visit Fibre Fling 5 and see all the new artwork Out-of-the Box will have on display this year. We always have new pieces and don't reshow any of last year's.  I'll have my Bird piece that was at Stittsville Library there (see November post below) and hopefully another piece mounted on canvas if I can get it ready in time. There's also a section with gift items for sale.   I'm making some fabric bowls and hand stamped fat quarters to sell.  See the flyer below for details.  Looking forward to seeing you there!

Stamp making with a friend

Last week I spent a day showing a friend how to make stamps with fun foam or craft foam, with Magic Stamps and carving erasers and rubber.  Here are some of the stamps I made that day.   We stamped with acrylic paint on paper afterwards but you could easily use them to stamp on fabric too.  A nice relaxing activity.

This stamp was made with craft foam which has an adhesive layer behind with backing paper which you peel off.  After drawing the flower design onto the craft foam I cut out the shape with an exacto knife. Then I stuck it onto a thicker piece of foam and again carved out the shape.  Then I attached the thicker piece to a piece of rubber floor tile using double sided tape.  This gives a nice deep surface and a good base to hold onto when stamping.  You can see on the right paper the flower as I carved it and on the left I double stamped it.  I find the simpler the design you start with the better.

Above is a Magic Stamp which I heated up and pressed onto some textured wallpaper.  They recommend heating Magic Stamps with a heat gun.  I have also used a hot iron (with a press cloth between!).   It doesn't take long to heat up.  This gave a nice crisp image which is easy to stamp onto paper or fabric.

These are regular office store erasers carved with a Speedycarve tool or in my case using my wood cutting tools.  Very simple pattern and it makes an effective design on paper or fabric.  Now I can turn the erasers over and carve another design on the other side.  Please leave a comment below!

Fibre Fling 5!

I'm getting ready for the next Fibre Fling at Kitchissippi United Church.  Here's the brochure:

I've been busy making fabric bowls this weekend.