Get Altered Challenge - Altered Fabric

Hi Everyone and welcome to another Get Altered with eclectic Paperie challenge.   The Get Altered Challenge is held on the first Thursday of each month and each challenge is an opportunity for you to be inspired by one of our eTeam’s creations, and to share your work, and be entered into our challenge prize drawing!

This week it's Micki's turn to host another fun and exciting challenge. After much thought, I decided on a FABRIC themed challenge.   I challenge you to use fabric in your project.  

I came up with the idea to incorporate fabric into my project because I've had this wonderful hand embroidered pillow case which had a huge rip in the middle of the case.  Instead I ended up using the fabric as my canvas.  And Ladies (and Gents), let me just gush right now about how awesome the fabric feels covered with paint.  Totally LOVE it.  It feels like leather.  So Ladies, grab your paints and some old material and let's play!

The case is cotton and over time the material has gotten really thin.  The majority of the pillow case is white cotton with the embroidery along the edges.  Because this is the first time I'm doing mixed media on fabric I decided to play it safe and use the plain white part of the pillow.  But trust me, I'll definitely will use the embroidered part ..... just haven't quite figured out how or what....yet.

I decided on a basic heart shape, which I lightly sketched onto the fabric with a regular pencil, which I then cut out.  I had kept the material folded so that when I cut out my shape I had two, one front and one for the back. 

Using Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive, I applied a narrow strip of glue around the edge of the fabric heart. I applied the glue around 3/4 of the heart, leaving the rest free of glue for the opening for the fiberfill stuffing.

You could use a brush to smooth out the glue, however, I completely forgot to that in my rush to start playing with paint.  Next I aligned the two heart pieces and smooshed the edges together.  I let the heart dry overnight.

Once dry, I cut a smaller heart out of card stock and inserted it into the heart through the opening.  The card stock helped to prevent any gesso from seeping through and "gluing" the front and back pieces together.

Next I applied two coats of Claudine Hellmuth Gesso  to both sides of the heart, making sure to let each layer dry before adding another.  One layer would have been enough, but because the fabric was really thin, I wanted to play it safe which is why I added a second coat of gesso.

Then came the fun part.  Using a pencil, I sketched a quick body outline and then worked on the background adding paints, stamps and stencils. 

I had just gotten my eP package of the new Stampington & Company Circle stamp and the Earnest Cling Mount stamp.  Love these wonderful stamps.  I also added Unity's She Art Print stamp and Graffiti stamp.  Stamping randomly on both sides of the heart with Jet Black StazOn ink. 

I used the smaller stars from Dylusions Starry Starry Night stencil, using Adirondack Purple Twilight Paint Dabber paint. Once I was happy with my background, I finished my girl using Adirondack paints.  I added shading by using my finger, dipped in water and Faber-Castell gelatos.

 In the picture above, you can see that the painted fabric lacked any sheen (but boy did it feel heavenly to the touch) and because I wanted to seal everything, I added a nice coat of Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium to both sides.

Once that was dry, it was time to stuff my little heart.  NOTE, remember to take out the card stock :-)

After the heart was stuffed with fiberfill, I added  Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to the opening and used office binders to hold the edge together until dry.  I added the wax paper to prevent any glue that seeps out from sticking to the binders.

The sentiment was computer generated, printed onto regular copy paper and added with  Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium.   In the end I decided to add some wire and use this little happy heart as a door hanging.

But I could totally see a basket full of these little mixed media hearts.  I totally love using fabric as my canvas.

The Get Altered Challenge is about exploring your creative journey, about stepping outside of your comfort zone, experimenting with new products, and creating altered and mixed media art.  Share a unique card, a scrapbook or journal page, a canvas, or any other project where you’ve used paint, ink, paper, and embellishments.  We want to see your work and hear about your inspiration!  

All of those who play along with our challenge will be entered into a prize drawing for a $15.00 gift certificate to the eclectic Paperie store.

So grab your supplies and play along!  Here are a few things to keep in mind for this challenge…

• You do not have to use products sold in the eP store…but we do love it when you do!
• Share a direct link to your creation, not just your blog, using the Linky Tools feature at the end of this post.  If, for any reason, the Linky Tools doesn’t cooperate, please add a link in the Comments section of the blog.
• When uploading to any online galleries, please use any of the following keywords; eP, eclectic Paperie or Get Altered Challenge.  Link your creations to the eP blog.
• If you’d like to be considered as one of our featured projects and be entered into our prize drawing, please be sure to add your link no later than 6:00 pm EST on Thursday, March 20th.  

We can't wait to see what you create!

Supplies Used:

InLinkz.com