Seeing with new eyes

I decided this past weekend to go through my scrap container, and I was amazed at what was in there. There were pieces of my art journey from the very start – many that I had forgotten about. The majority of pieces in the container were either practice pieces for the final “glamour” shot, failed experiments, or pieces I decided were ugly. While looking at these scraps, I started seeing them with new eyes. Several of the pieces I hated, I really like now!

It reminds me of a journal. In journal writing (which I taught for 11 years) you can go back over what you have written. It’s like a library of your life. You can see how you’ve grown. Well, I found that also looking through all of these scraps. They all told a story of my art journey.

These were some of my first gel printing pieces. Those two bracelets were made from the fabric. I contacted a couple magazines back then to write a tutorial on the bracelets but neither were interested so they ended up in the scrap bin. I never wrote a tutorial for the blog. I do have a bracelet I wear made with the turquoise fabric.

This piece brings back fun memories of my exhibit with Evi. We called it Colorful Friendship where we combined our art. Mine was a variety of surface design techniques. Hers was beautiful painted silk.

This piece came about because of my obsession with marbling. I took one of my marbling pictures and made a stencil of the design. Here is my tutorial.

The following fabric are two soy wax batik pieces. I fire up my soy wax pot every once in awhile. I really love it and don’t know why I don’t play with it more often! The left one is a “failed” ice dyed soy wax piece. The right one is a bandana which has now made it’s way to my hubby’s bandana drawer!

 

 

The following two were part of the Printed Fabric Bee that I was involved with for several years. If you’re new to the blog, we made fabric every month for the “queen bee of the month” with her theme and then made an extra piece to give away. It was a fun project and often pushed me out of my comfort zone. The first piece is using Color Magnet with dye. The second piece was making a stencil and printing on ink-dyed white on white fabric.

 

 

Lastly, I found this piece of cotton that was the “carrier fabric”  I used to dye my first silk with men’s ties.

 

There are lots and lots of memories in this scrap container. As I mentioned at the beginning, pieces I really hated I really see in a different light. Some show me how I’ve grown in this journey. They may still be ugly, but they show me my growth. Others I really appreciate now. They are really interesting, if not pretty.

Now where do I go with this? I have a couple ideas. I’m working on two so far that I will show you soon. Some of the tiny scraps will be given to Dawn who creates beautiful art from tiny snippets of fabric.

Happy Thanksgiving! For some inspiration, check out Off The Wall Friday Linkup.