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Annual Art Retreat

Annual Art Retreat

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My local art group had our annual art retreat the first weekend of September. We were lucky and had gorgeous weather and no smoke from any forest fires. We get together on Friday afternoon and stay through Sunday mid afternoon. Our two activities were deconstructed screen printing and gelatin plate printing.

Here we are inside doing some gelatin plate printing. The area in the middle is covered with plastic and we lay out all our work to dry. I took the photos from up in the loft. The floor was covered with loads of wonderful color by the end of the day.

Most of the photos that I took at the lodge didn’t come out all that well. The light isn’t good inside the building and it was a bit windy to take photos of papers outside. And I didn’t get any photos of screen printing because I always get so involved in the process that I forget to take photos. The slide shows below show mainly my work because I took photos afterwards but there are a few from other members. Anything on fabric or felt is not mine as I only printed on paper this time.

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These are deconstructed screen printing. Paula brought some paper coasters that we tried printing on too.

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And these are the gelatin plate printed samples. We used a variety of methods including stencils, magazine transfer and alcohol inks.

And here is the pile of printed papers that I can now use for my art and design class. I use them for collages and backgrounds. We had a great time and we’re already looking forward to next year. We have big plans for all our monthly sessions and I will share those as we go along. Do you have a group of people who you create with? We’d love to hear about it over on the free forum. It’s free to join and you can share your work, talk with other felt and fiber makers and ask questions. Come join us!

Art Retreat

Art Retreat

Comments 15 comments

Our fiber art group had an art retreat the first weekend of September. We stayed at a lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake near Marion, Montana. It was a bit smokey this year due to wild fires but we still had loads of fun.

We started the weekend with deconstructed screen printing. I hadn’t made up any screens in advance since part of the group had never completed this part of the process.

This is a screen that Deb created with blue glue.

Here’s another screen with thickened dye.

Here are just a few of the results from the screen printing. We printed on paper and on fabric. We were using Procion MX Dyes so we didn’t print on any felt during this session.

Deb had agreed to show us her technique for making a cut and taped collage with some of the papers that we have printed, screen printed, gelli printed, eco printed over the last year. It was a neat method where the pieces were taped together and then sliced with a craft knife, re-positioned and taped back together again. The process is repeated many times.

Here’s Sally working on her eco printed papers. I didn’t get a photo of the final result but if you click on the photo on the right, I think you can see how the process works.

Louise created a collage using old photos. Hers was much smaller and was a bit more tricky than starting with larger pieces of paper.

This is Deb’s collage. She used screen printed papers that she made the day before. Normally, she would have squared up the edges and ended with a rectangular shaped piece. I encouraged her to leave the jagged edges and I really liked the end result on the right. She also made a companion “baby” piece with the leftover scraps but sadly I didn’t get a photo.

And here’s my piece. I used some of my dyed papers plus eco prints to create my collage. I have no idea what I’ll do with this. Perhaps I’ll cut it into smaller pieces and make greeting cards out of it.

We also did some gelli printing. Louise and Paula gelli printed feathers. They hadn’t tried that before and it was kind of cool. The larger white feathers seemed to be the most successful. You do the printing in layers, first apply the background colors and then add detail on top. I’m not sure what the plans are for the feathers but they turned out pretty cool.

Don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming online class that begins on October 6th. The class is Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt. Just go here to sign up and it’s only $45 for a 4 week course with loads of information.

Art Retreat

Art Retreat

Comments 19 comments

Last weekend my surface design group went on an art retreat. We stayed at the Kiwanis Lodge in Marion, Montana which is right on a lake. The weather had been rainy and cold and I thought it would continue into the weekend. But a small miracle occurred and we had beautiful weather all weekend. We did eco printing most of the weekend but a couple of us did some gelatin plate printing as well.

The Lodge

Here’s a few of us getting ready to start on Friday afternoon. We had all collected a lot of leaves so we had two full tables covered with leaves.

A Variety of LeavesHere’s just a small selection of what we used. Some worked great and others not as much. But almost everything we tried printed on paper.

Cards from the Florist

Louise got some leaves from a local florist and they gave us little cards with different sayings on them. This was mine.

We soaked our papers in alum water and then applied the leaves that had been dipped in iron water. Some of used plastic in between to resist the leaves printing where we didn’t want them. Then we put ceramic tiles on both sides of the paper leaf sandwiches and tied them up.

We had several steaming stations and pretty much kept them going all weekend. There was also an onion skin bath that some of the items were boiled in.

After steaming for an hour, the fun part of opening the packages began.

We got some beautiful results. The bright blue is from blue carrots.

Some of us also did eco printing on fabric and larger paper. I didn’t manage to get any photos of the fabric that was printed. But I will try to get some photos at our next meeting to show you.

We also played with gelatin plate printing again which was fun and colorful.

Sunset at Kiwanis Lodge

And I’ll leave you with this photo I took of the gorgeous sunset. It was a gorgeous weekend and we had a great time. It’s always so nice to allow yourself dedicated time to “play” with like-minded friends.