Painted Lutradur

Yesterday was the first Monday of the month, and that means a fun day with my Anything Art Bee!

The topic was Lutradur, a sort of cross between paper and fabric made from polyester fibers.

A helpful guide on using this product is Fabulous Fabric Art With Lutradur, by Leslie Riley, C&T Publishing.

Lutradur is sold in packages of 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, larger size sheets, and in various weights.  I had a package with five light and five regular weight, and our facilitator Kathy had a sample of the ultra-light.

Lutradur can be sewn, painted, run through a printer, cut, burned with heat gun, embellished with glued-on elements...and it does not fray! 

We all began by painting our sheets and stamping our sheets with an assortment of paints including Dyn-A-Flow, Setacolor, Lumiere, and regular craft acrylic paints.  We worked outside on a table covered with plastic.  When the paints dried, we added stamps with ink stamp pads.  It was fun to pool our stamps together. Some of us also chose to use a heat gun to make a lacy appearance.

Here is one of my painted, stamped, heat-zapped sheets. Notice the difference in the color hues on this white background

and the tan floor.  By the way, the "Full Moon" in the upper left is due to a jar of paint being placed on the piece to keep the wind from blowing it away.  I forgot about Setacolor having sun-printing properties!

Here is a second piece on the tan floor

on a rosy orange place mat

and again on white.

That is something to be considered as a design element due to the translucence of the fiber as well as the transparency of the burned holes.

Our project of the day was from the Leslie Riley book.  We took one 8.5" x 11" piece of Lutradur, folded it in half lengthwise and then in fourths width-wise.  We ended up with little eight-page booklets like this.

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Some of the gals brought embellishments and began immediately to add charms and fibers.  I left my "pretties" at home, so mine is not close to being finished.  I was going for a woodsy, mountainy look, but when the paints dried, they looked more blue-green.  HMMM, maybe a Mountain Mermaid book? 

Now that I have opened my packages of plain white product and actually tried them, I think I will enjoy working with this versatile product.  I created some TAP images and will try transferring them to Lutradur for my next experiment.