July 11th Issaquah Artwalk is today! Plus Silk Bookmark Tutorial.

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Hi All!!



I wanted to remind everyone that today is the Issaquah Artwalk from 6-9pm.  There will be live bands, a variety of foods and craft items to purchase - along with the art of course!








Here is a small pile of the painted silk scraps I have


I'm busy getting my paintings ready to show and I'm also experimenting with other ways to use my silk.  I end up with a lot of painted scraps which are quite pretty but very small.  Some I've turned into greeting cards (and I keep using them for gifts so I don't have any to sell), but I have a bunch of even smaller scraps and it's taken me a while, but I finally realized that I can make bookmarks out of them.



The scraps cut into bookmark-width strips



My scraps can be left over from edges of paintings, or torn up paintings that I didn't like, or even my test-strips where I paint samples of the dye to make sure my colors are correct before I put them on my actual paintings.
 So my steps are as follows:
  1. Use MS-Publisher to create bookmarks (I printed my artist logo and name plus contact info on one side and left the other side blank for gluing the silk to)
  2. I ended up with 5 bookmarks per sheet of card stock which I then cut into bookmarks
  3. I cut/tore the silk scraps into bookmark widths
  4. I mounted the silk onto the back-side of the bookmarks.  
  5. I punched a hole at the top
  6. I happened to have silk ribbons left over from a different project which I then added to the top through the hole.  
  7. I added a dab of glue to the base of the ribbons to make sure they didn't slip out (silk tends to come untied!)



I rather like how the bookmarks turned out.  I have a LOT more scraps.. but this was a good start.   I am also toying with using the scraps to decoupage the cover of an art journal... but I haven't done that yet.

Ok back to work!
See you at the Artwalk!
Rebecca






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