FIBER JUNKIES PAINTING FUN

What fun!  The Fiber Junkies have spent several months experimenting with fabric paints.  In part, that got our members focused on just how much paint they've accumulated and the realization that it should be used up.

 So, for our meeting this month we came up with the idea of thinning the paint enough to allow it to be sprayed....thus we could transform fabrics we owned to give them another look.

We learned one thing.....the large spray bottles (seen above) don't work well.....way too often they squirted globs of paint, rather than a fine mist, no matter how we adjusted them.  What did work well were recycled butter spray bottles.  Go figure!


Here's a piece of fabric I brought which I never found a way to use because it was so spotty.

 And this is one half of it after I don't know how many layers of paint.  When the spray bottles spit large spots of paint, we restored to spreading it around using paint brushes.  And yes, we finger painted too which worked equally well.

Here's the other half of that fabric where I used different colors of paint.  We ALL fell in love with a metallic bronze paint that Kate brought.  It turned out to be our 'go-to' paint if we didn't like what we did on our first try.  The rule....if you don't like your first attempt.....use the bronze paint!

 Here's a peak at a pale green fabric I had.....a color I would probably never work with.  By the time I was working with this one, I was down and dirty with the painting.  So I started squirting various paint colors in a Styrofoam meat tray.....stirred them together and got this pretty green color.  This was one of my more successful pieces.

Our mild spring had turned cold so for the first few hours we worked in a closed garage (this is messy.....so outside or in a garage will be your best choice if you want to try this at home).  After lunch the sun came out and we moved into high gear.....filling drying racks and even restoring to drying the fabric on the driveway.

 This sheer moire started life as a kinda a dirty gray....

.....now it has a new life!

The same holds true for this very large scale print.....not my style but.....

 with a little paint......I can see a usable future for it.


This spray paint day was such fun.....and we are now developing ideas about other ways to use up all that paint....  I hope our play day will inspire you!