Butterfly

It has been a long time since I posted anything, mostly because I've been working flat out on the book. Well, the book is almost done. All the text has been written, the artwork is nearly completed, and Jane has just about finished laying out all the pages. It's hard to believe, but within a week or so, this book will be out of my hands, and not a moment too soon!

This butterfly was done for the section on synthetic materials. First, I painted a sheet of medium weight Lutradur yellow, and let it dry. Then I treated it with Bubble Jet Set solution and hung it to dry.

When that was fully dry, I ran the sheet of Lutradur through my computer so that a butterfly design printed straight onto it (in this photo, I have printed my dog Jack's image, but the butterfly was done the same way). Because of the stiffness of Lutradur, I didn't have to secure it to freezer paper before printing, it just went through the printer beautifully.

Next I layered an orange synthetic organza over the top of the butterfly (I could see the printed design through it). I put a thick orange furnishing fabric underneath. After pinning the layers together, I thread painted the butterfly using a variegated orange/yellow/red thread (more on thread painting  in my next post).

After the butterfly was thread painted  I used a heat gun to distress the organza and Lutradur. You can see the areas within the wings and along the edges that are melted. I will probably mount this on fabric covered foam board so it can be hung.