Insomnia

This is what happens when I can't sleep and need something quiet to do at 3 am. This is a little 8" strip of fabric that I bought sort of by accident and decided it wasn't big enough to do anything else with so I might as well play. Out comes the last gelatin plate from the refrigerator (maybe now we'll have room for actual food!) and the only chunky stamp I could lay my hands on in the dark (the hub was still sleeping like a normal person) and off I went! A few pulls on the gel plate with gold metallic and then some experimenting from then on. I used the bottom of the gel plate and accidentally got some really cool grooves from where the plastic wrap was wrinkled when I poured it and a very subtle concentric rectangle pattern from the shape of the disposable tin pan I poured it into. I cut about 1/3 of the thing off at the bottom to play with 2 different pieces that had the original gold prints. A couple of additional stamps and stencils on the long piece including over-stamping the dragonfly, stenciling the bamboo around the edges and the 2 Chinese characters. Those will be highlighted eventually. I'm thinking either a bamboo print fabric for the border or something metallic as a flange and then something else. It'll tell me what it needs.

The smaller piece has a bunch of direct printing with wadded up foil, a piece of drawer liner and some other stuff. I also used one of those campaign signs from the front yard as a monoprint surface for the vegetation at the bottom. Lots of hand-painting for the cattails and some other "experimentation" on the whole thing. It still needs some work, but I'm extremely happy with the progress so far. I have part of a bamboo placemat that I take apart to use the bamboo pieces and I think these might both be just the right width to use those for a hanging mechanism.