Day Thirty-two

Today I took a photo that I took at a friend's place in Maine and played with it digitally.

Day Thirty-one

Here are pictures of some of the screen prints I did yesterday. The first is a simplification of a studio mate's photo of a pond in Africa on hand-dyed cotton. The second and third are torn bits of old newspaper on hand-dyed silk noil.






Today at the studio in Lowell, we created Thermofax screens and I screen printed some fabric. I will post some pictures tomorrow morning.

Day Thirty

On Monday I worked on a quilt and then created a paper collage. I didn't think much of it but improved it a little today with some digital embellishment.

Day Twenty-nine

It is Chinese New Years and the year of the dog, so I made this digital collage. The black text says Happy New Year in Chinese. The dog is a Shar-pei puppy, soooo cute.

Day Twenty-eight

Today I attended an all day class in 3D soldering (meaning creating something that is not flat like a charm). It was fun but I still need practise to get the soldier smooth. We used the toughest lead free soldier - Silver Gleam.



I did a large piece and a smaller piece, and then at the end a charm as I had time.


On all the pieces I used parts of my digital collages or ATCs done for this list. The pictures are side, back and front.

Day Twenty-seven

Today I was in a vintage frame of mind and did another digital collage using the scan of an old clock face. Tomorrow I go to a 3D soldiering class at Absolutely Everything in Topsfield MA, so we will see what comes out of that.

Day Twenty-six

I did another digital collage, this time using images and then almost covering them in "paint" with Painter IX. This was a very interesting experiment. taking color away instead of adding it like I did yesterday.

Day Twenty-five

Today I did another digital collage, made from paper and photo scans I had. I then painted on top and adjusted the color curve.

Day Twenty-four

Today I created a digital collage, made from scans of collaged background papers that were made over the last year or so.

Day Twenty-three

What horrible weather today, I left home in driving snow. When I got to work there was a message that I could go home. I waited a bit for the snow to let up. and when I got home my driveway was filled with snow. Thank goodness a neighbor came with his snow blower and cleaned it out for me. I have the best neighbors! I finished my homework and made another ATC.

Day Twenty-two

Today I worked on a new quilt but I can't show it until it's done and submitted. When I got home from work I worked on the homework for my design class, today was exercises in Line. The book we are using is "Design Principles and Problems ". Thankfully, I got a copy on eBay for much less than what Amazon has it for. After my homework, I made an ATC. I like the vintage magazine pictures of woman.

Day Twenty-one

I made another digital collage this evening. I plunked the woman on the garden wall, did a lot of color and graphic changes, and added a transparent envelope negative on top.

Day Twenty

Today I made a digital collage ATC.

Days Eighteen and Nineteen

Yesterday was a wash-out, literally. It was raining so hard and so windy here in Massachusetts that I just couldn't do anything of value at all. So this morning I made up for it by making 2 fabric postcards

The first postcard was made from a gelatin print on top of a screen print (or the other way around, I can't remember), that I had in my pile of bits and pieces.

The second postcard was made from an iron-on transfer I made on to dyed silk noil in a class by Jean Ray Laury.

Day Seventeen

Tuesday the seventeenth was a studio day for me in Lowell. We dyed lots of fabric, and for me, vintage napkins that I overdye and sell. That evening I went to my Crit group "Tangled Threads" and worked on the Indian Square a little. But, we laughed and ate warm banana bread with cream cheese, more than we worked. A fun evening.

I sewed buttons and beads on the Indian Square and planned the next application of button/bead combo.

Day Sixteen

This really is day sixteen. Yesterday, I called my effort the sixteenth when it should have been the fifteenth. I corrected that, this is the real sixteen. This is a digitally altered picture of a jellyfish. My plan is to use this image as the basis for several surface design exercises like resists, discharge, paint and dye.

Day Fifteen

Oops, this should have been 15 not 16. On Sunday I was at work with no customers so I worked on the indian pattern square quilt. I added some acrylic painted sections, embroidery, and beads.

The first photo is a detail of the top left.

I was asked the techniques used for this quilt, so far I:
1. Over-dyed an old linen damask napkin
2. Drew the pattern on with washable fabric marker
3. Backed the fabric with black quilt batting
4. Sewed all those lines with black thread
5. Colored the many of the areas with shiva paint sticks
6. Created dimensional squares with xpandaprint.
7. Painted and stenciled several areas with acrylic paint
8. Embroidered around some of the painted areas
9. Beaded
more to come...

Day Fourteen

I made a small quilt today as my project. I have been interested in squares, raw edge, simply sewn. The background is hand-dyed cotton, the squares are hand-dyed silk.

Day Thirteen

For today I finished up th last 2 ATCs that made backgrounds for last weekend. Yhe second ATC with the leaf feels very Japanese to me, like a sumi painting.

This afternoon I went to see Brokeback Mountain. It really is a stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking movie. I highly recommend it, although it has left me feeling very sad.

Day Twelve

I didn't get a lot done today. However I did do a image transfer using an inkjet image on paper and gesso. The fabric is canvas painted with acrylics. It is a picture of me as a child. Tomorrow I will do more on this piece.

Day Eleven

Today I created this digitally enhanced picture of an Iris. I really like the contrast of dark and light and the delicacy of the image.

Day Ten

Last night I had the honor to hear Chungie Lee speak at the quilt guild I belong to (Quilter's Connection). Her work is really stunning, here are an example. She also brought a piece that she had just finished, we were the first to see it. You can see some pictures of it on Sandy Donabed's blog.

Today I finished 2 more ATCs.

Day Nine

I created 2 ATCs out of the background pieces I did yesterday. Old photos, layers of paper, paint, words and stenciled letters.

Day Eight

Day 8 is another fabric/paper collage. I also started a bunch of paper ATCs, which I will finish tomorrow. They are based on Alphabet stencils a la Lynne Perrella's new "Alphabetica" book.

Day Seven

Today I gave a class in Fabric Collage, so my Day 7 is one of the collages I did for the class. It is made with fabric and paper with a little gold foil. I may want to do more with it, but then I always think that. I belong to a studio with 7 other women fiber artists, called the Lowell Fiber Studio at Western Ave Studios in Lowell. Today Western Ave Studios had a Open Studio day (the first Saturday of each month). I played with more collage there. At 5:30 all the studios joined up for a pot luck dinner. Great fun and great food and I'm tired, but think I have just enough energy to watch the Patriots tonight.

Day Six

My art today was finishing the first draft of my website, which I just posted. I still need to add my most recent work, add the image closeup pages and finish up the wordy pages. But, I'm just happy it is finally there. Please come and visit, let me know what you think. http://www.karenbettencourt.com

Day Five

I was at work today trying to think of something I could do for day five when I re-read the post about someone's sore heel. I could really empathize although my daily pain is osteo-arthritis, expecially in my hands. So I did a drawing with what I had on hand - felt tip pens. I hope it says sore hands, a bit anyway. I also dyed (painted) some matte board with fiber reactive dyes to use at a later date. Whew! I'm glad I'm caught up.

Day Four

My project for Day Four was a small box I bought at AC Moore. I painted, applied ephemera papers with medium, and then painted it again. I've had the box for awhile and finally decided to do something with it. It is called "Letterbox".

Day Three

Well, I'm a little late posting Day Three. I was away most of yesterday, so that when I came home, I only had the energy to create a digital collage. This one includes a photo of my cat Mouse, and scans of various ephemera. I then did some digital enhancements to the final collage.

Various people asked me about using the Shiva Paintstiks. Cedar Canyon Textiles has some good instructions. Also there are some useful books that give a lot of information and techniques.

Some Notes from my experience:

1. I have used the paintstik directly on fabric, but I generally use a stencil brush and a stencil or masking tape.

2. The paintstiks get a hard shell on them, so that each time you use them you have to shave off the hard shell with a knife. I keep a cheap little paring knife with my paintstiks. I'll try to post pictures of my technique at some point.

3. If I'm going to mix colors, I put the lightest color down first. The painted designs in the quilt shown earlier in the blog all started with white paintstik.

I'm working on Day Four now.

Day Two

This is the second day of my blog, and I'm kinda having fun. Today I worked on my latest small quilt, applying Shiva paintsticks in the design. I also played with Xpandaprint, which are the matte black horizontal squares. Tomorrow I'll paint the little squares with metallic.


Here is a picture of my Day one project, the cover of my Daily Devotions sketchbook. It is a simple paper collage, I may add more later.