Silk painting, journalling and dying(!) all in one day!!

Wow..l had forgotten how much l enjoyed Silk Painting............There are many different weights of silk and quite a few brands of silk paints. So there is a lot of choice, to use iron set paints or steaming and so one.
First Stage: pin the silk to wooden frame ( actually a soft wood picture frame!)with 3 pronged pins. Always make sure the tension is correct and not too bouncy or too slack!Too tight( eg: to bouncy) and you get ridges across the silk, too loose and it sags in the centre.

Now..2nd stage:....let your imagination go wild!!

3rd stage.....Paint away with your silk paints..........l just LOVE colour!!

4th stage...shows the effect sea salt has on wet paint..then wiped off once enough pattern has formed to your liking.

5th stage...gutta used as decoration, all over finished piece.. in this case dots.....all that is left is to remove painting off frame, then set the silk painting by ironing or tumble dryer for 15mins!

Next fish image.
First stage of fish painting.

2nd stage of painting.......

3rd stage of painting with gutta used as decoration!... Then ironing to set.

When these painting are framed, they are backed onto white paper..why? The reason is the colours become more vibrant when backed on white. Really makes a huge difference!
I have had "Art over drive" at the moment..wish l was always like this! Depresstion is an awful thing but l will not let it control me, more than it already does.
Then next creative act, was starting a new journal....black card..so should be intersting! I painted first two double spreads. Firstly was this spread, l painted gesso on pages, when dried painted yellow and red acrylic paint and spread it with credit card!

Then glued pieces of old book print on to surface.

This is the 2nd spread. I didn't paint gesso on here first, went straight in with the yellow and green paint..still using the ever useful credit card! This spread has far more texture to it and some of the black page is peeping through.

Then the last peice of crafting l did last night was to experiment with some Organic tea, that l had received free in a magazine. I didn't like the smell but...it was orange/yellow in colour, so l thought..dying! One tea bag produces a very pale cream dye...so l wonder what quite a few would do...experimental time l think!!!!

Produced a nice cream colour though.