Wallflower

Before I go on, I have been encouraged to show more of what's happening here, more often. (Paul was showing the blog to someone at his work and mentioned to me that I hadn't posted in a while when he got home. He's into it!)

So, in that regard, here from two months back, the finished wallpaper in Rana's bedroom with the rose vine growing through the trellis-mullion window and ending their life as images in the pattern.

Carol helped me place the full-color-fading-into-sepia toned bedroom wallpaper pattern that I had printed out onto inkjet decal paper. This is a material I was hoping would be easy to apply to the wall in tiled sheets, thus eliminating the decal material border around each rose shape. I had designed the pattern to move across the wall in a certain way, that would appear half organic near the 3D prop vine and halfway looking like straight ornate botanical vintage wallpaper. However the plaster texture of the wall wouldn't allow sheets of the decal to disappear and they trapped air bubbles in the pot holes.

We cut out each rose to place by hand instead. And it wasn't an easy method either. The decal print outs required a convoluted method of applying an adhesive sheet on the back that caused me to waste over half of each sheet in making mistakes. But I was in too far to turn back. If I was trying to do something like this again, I'd ORDER A YARD OF CUSTOM FABRIC INSTEAD!!! and apply it easily to the wall!!! It would have cost the same, and looked a bit better in the end.

Not to dwell though. The wall in the bedroom is done. I used tulle netting as a top layer, applied with matte medium, to lessen the halos and to even out the texture. I saw a real rose bush with rose hips and thought Halfland 's Tea Cup Rose Bush should have one too. This one, seen upper right, made from a hand-blown glass bead.

Comments

  1. My experience: The harder I fight with materials, the deeper the understanding of what I do or want will be. (Synapses, baby!)

    – It sounds so familiar!

    And it looks great!

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  2. It's come up a treat! I can see that paper wallpaper would lose the texture of the wall, but fabric could probably stretch and go with it.
    So thanks for posting that link, I had no idea there was a place you could get small batches of custom designed fabric made up! Lots of possibilities there.

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  3. One thing I've seen at a fabric store (and bought and never used!) is a packet of ink jet fabric sheets. No matter, your result is really beautiful.

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  4. The wallflowers look great! And I concur- I've been following for forever and I love seeing work in progress shots!

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  5. Hello and thanks, Everyone! Hello too to people who I haven't seen comment before! Thanks for doing that. makes a difference. Spurs me on, etc.

    YES! Nick, YOu can get fantastic custom fabric in as little as 1 yard lengths! I've seen other artists use it to great effect, such as the amazing Jennifer Murphy.... She says, "I've gotten fabric printed with Spoonflower before and I've been really happy with the quality,"

    pictures of her designs she used in making clothing for her plush animal sculptures here: http://andothersillythings.blogspot.com/2011/01/fabric-done-and-done.html

    They even make KNITS Y'all!

    http://andothersillythings.blogspot.com/2010/04/evening-projects.html

    and YES! Maureen-inkjet fabric would have been a great idea too. Thanks!

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  6. Maureen - never seen ink jet fabric sheets! I have bought iron-on transfer sheets and used those to put some patterns onto fabric, but there is a glue layer in it which tends to stiffen the fabric a bit. It worked ok for making mini kilim type rugs. I'll have to have a look for printable fabric sheets next time I'm at Spotlight (big fabric store chain here in Oz.) For some small one-off bits for costumes that could be ok. But I'm really thinking about getting Spoonflower to print up some custom fabric designs - I spend a lot of time looking through the fat quarters and making do with what is available.
    Knits too eh?

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