Prepping for the Summer Art Project

Drying teabags on fabric.

I spent some time in the kitchen today preparing for this summer's family art project.

Teabags waiting for the boiling water.

Black and green teabags soaking.

Why waste tea? The teabags are drying on cloth and more cloth is soaking in the tea.

Every summer, I put on my artistic thinking cap and come up with a project to share with my nieces and nephew and other family members.

In the past we've:

• made Jazzy dolls
• created woven bags on an innovative loom (my design) for collecting summer treasures
• painted and sun printed silk scarves and created story bags
• printed fabric squares for a 60th anniversary hanging

This summer, I was inspired by one of my Story Cloth students, Susan P. For one of her story cloths she printed designs on dried teabags. I even decided to write my upcoming Newsletter about Deconstructing Tea...using dried teabags, the little envelopes they come, the tags and string and even the boxes to create little pieces of tea art (Hope you'll sign up for Julie B Booth Surface Design News (if you haven't already) to find out more about it!)

Some of the teabag prints from the next issue of Julie B Booth Surface Design News.

My plan is for all of us to make little books using teabags for pages. We'll collect small leaves and other nature textures and print on the teabags. The covers will be made from softened and painted brown paper. As usual, I'm already getting excited to see what my nieces and nephew do. They always surprise and amaze me!

Sun Printing in Maine

Today, we set out an old sheet, mixed up some Pebeo Setacolor Transparent fabric paints, spread out some silk scarves and canvas bags and started sun printing!

First we gathered some wild flowers and pine needles and put out our treasures from yesterday's trip to the beach.

Then we painted our scarves and bags...

And placed our finds on the wet paint.

The sun was HOT, but we were determined.

There were successes but the prints were very subtle.

Don't forget it's just two days until the Searching for Roy G Biv Challenge...this month it's GREEN!


 

Sun Printing

Sun printing

This weekend I'm working on the second newsletter which will be out a week from today. I'll be continuing to talk about supplies, getting set up and will also be highlighting sun printing.

Fortunately, today was a perfect day to sun print! Bright sun, low humidity and only a gently breeze.

I gathered up supplies and headed outside to paint and print.

This is always a fun project with visual surprises.

Now it's back to writing the newsletter!