Seed Head Inspiration (1)

Back in the summer Gina posted a series of blogs about a Sketchbook project (click here to see them all), and I had a go at doing alot of her ideas,  (I loved painting with ink and uncooked spaghetti!).  A few weeks ago I decided to experiment further with the stencil I'd made of a poppy seedhead, and stencilled with extra heavy gesso onto tyvek paper.  When it was dry I free-motion embroidered around the gesso and randomly across the tyvek.  Then I blasted it all with a heat gun, painted it with black writing ink, bleached it, and painted over the gessoed area with a gold markal paint stick.  Finally I highlighted areas with treasure gold (a purchase from the Knitting and Stitching Show last month) and mounted it on painted pelmet vilene.

 (To see the detail you'll need to click on the image to enlarge it)

I love how tyvek does its own thing, and how the gesso and stitching goes someway to controlling it, but not totally.  (I'll let you see how I used the same stencil with garden fleece another time!)