Altered Surface

I recently took part in an ATC swap with the theme 'Altered Surfaces'. I knew immediately that this was the perfect opportunity to try out techniques and follow a tutorial by Lin Brown ... this was the result ...

I love it! Thank you Lin.

Fantasy Film

I've been playing with Fantasy (Fusible) Film with these results ...

Faux carnival glass (tutorial by RachO113) - the light isn't great and the flash shows a bit but in real life these are very pretty and shiny.

I wanted to try something else so I took various scraps of painted paper and using gel medium pasted the film to the papers. For some of them I crumpled the film first and on some of them I cut little pieces out. I also glued the papers to lightweight card stock for a firmer foundation. 

When they were dry (well nearly dry ... I was impatient) I blasted them with a heat gun. They turned out very pretty and I used the Tim Holtz tattered florals die to turn them into flowers ...

Again in real life these are beautifully shiny. I curled the petals a little to give dimension. 

I only had one colour of Fusible Film - Crystal Aurora - from Crafty Notions.

Art!

I finally have something worth blogging. Creativity has been a little slow lately but these experiments with oiled paper which I made for a swap turned out quite well. I have used ordinary cheap copy paper and coloured it with spray inks in the first two pictures and with Brusho watercolours for the third. The Brusho sheet was stamped prior to colouring with Stazon ink using some floral stamps from The Artistic Stamper. The papers were then coated with oil (extra virgin olive oil in this case). This is worked into the paper by crumpling it over and over. It should then take an hour or so to dry, however I used far too much oil and the paper remained very oily so I put it between sheets of newspaper and ironed it a number of times with a hot iron until the oil was mostly removed. The results were a fabric like paper that took stitch beautifully. The green paper has Mistyfuse ironed onto it to give a black cobwebby effect but it is hard to pick up in the picture. I have made an ATC with each piece and have treated the paper exactly like fabric, backing it with felt before machining.