Painting, Tyvek, and Mosaic Tray

Our last get-together was multi-themed.  The common thread was painting though, with a couple of exceptions (Ellen, for example, worked on needlepoint over Skype from Ottawa).

Jordan started on his new painting (but isn't showing work in progress).  Jessica chose a monochromatic design, and used her fine, intricate floral stencils for the beautifully layered painting below (only partially finished):

Tamsen and I finished our collaboration - the mosaic tile tray.  I guess this is the place to give the whole story of this project, which started with a wood framed goose print (a thrift store find):

   

I painted a couple of ceramic tiles in brightly coloured backgrounds and tree silhouettes (using ceramics-specific and acrylic paints).  A layer or two of varnish, over the paint, ensured that the paint didn't scrape off during the grouting stage.

Tamsen broke up the tiles into shards, large and small, and rearranged them on the inside surface of the tray (the back of the goose print):



The next step was to finish the wood frame - and Tamsen is a pro at this (literally!).  She sanded all the edges (several times, and with different sizes of sand paper, if I observed correctly), and then used her fancy brush to apply 3 coats of shellack, which dried beautifully and gave the finished wood a nice, shiny, smooth look and feel.

I put the finishing touches on it all and turned the old framed print into a tray by attaching cabinet door handles to each end.  Because of some difficulty with the screws, I stumbled upon an interesting finish to the handles (the screws were too long for the width of the wood, so to make up the difference, I added shards of tiles to each end, which ended up matching the tiled tray very nicely... if I do say so myself).

And VOILA! the finished tray:

I also worked on painting Tyvek.   Tyvek is a wonderful addition to any fiber art.  It's paintable, it somehow absorbs paint despite having the feel and texture of plastic.  And its flat shape can be distorted by heat (for example, by pressing with a hot iron), giving a very textured surface, for those who love that sort of thing (and I do!).

Here were my painted sheets of Tyvek (my blank, white Tyvek sheets were just used FedEx envelopes, cut up):

I broke them up into even smaller pieces, and pressed them with my hot iron (in the garage - the fumes from this can be quite bad!).  The flat sheets bubbled and melted.  The process is very unpredictable, and you never know how much bubbling and/or melting you're going to get (but it's always fun to see the results):

 

 The unpainted back looks great too!