Trying out Gelatos

Happy Easter!  We are spending Easter weekend at our mountain cabin.  We plan to stay awhile and get some R&R.  Charlie got a drone for his birthday in March, and is having fun flying it around the mountain.  It provides some remarkable photos!

The first one is our cabin, driveway, and the pond below.  That is a reflection of the sun on the water.

The next one shows the cabin and surrounding land.

I recently ordered a set of Gelatos by Faber Castell.  I had noticed a lot of people using them on the Bible Art Journaling pages, and was interested in giving them a try.  The set I got had only pastel colors, a paintbrush, and some wedge-shaped sponges for blending and applying color.

                                                       

The first thing I always do when I get a new set of paints or "colors" is make a color chart.  These gelatos come in tubes like chapsticks.  I applied the color directly to a journal page, then used the paintbrush and water to blend them.  Don't you like the names of the colors?  Yum!

Next I tried making a background by just applying the colors straight from the tubes, blending with water, and then drawing over the background color with different Gelatos.  This have a rather pleasing effect.  The journal I am using has rather smooth paper.  I noticed you can still see the marks of the original application lines.  Probably should have used those blending sponges.

 Then I played around with a composition using the Gelatos to make fruit.  I had to add some darks with watercolor pencils after blending the Gelatos.  My set had only pastels and I just needed some darks for contrast!

I also brought up my Lucky Stars quilt materials to work on this weekend.  I now have stacks of background patches and lots of prints for making many more stars.  I even marked the diagonal line on all the small squares which become the star points.  I hope to do some sewing tomorrow.  I am making this quilt for my friend Marcia using fabrics that she purchased in Europe.  

                                       

I thought this would be a quick pattern to make, but it is not.  There is lots and lots of cutting, lots of seams to sew, and then you have to trim each block to size.  After that you add the rectangular blocks all around the stars to make 15" blocks.  Once those are done, it should be much faster to put this quilt together.

Here is a fun page that I made for the Bible Art Journaling Challenge.  It is about when Solomon was building the Temple, and all the artists and skilled women were called to weave and spin and make the garment for the priest to wear.  It is called an "ephod" and is worn with a breastplate that has twelve symbolic jewels.

I had to look up all this information, especially since I had no idea what an "ephod" was.  To illustrate this verse (Exodus 35:25-29) I decided to make an ephod and breastplate.

I fused Angelina fibers along with some Textiva film to make the garment.  The breastplate is on a piece of gold metallic fiber that you can sew through.  I glued on twelve hot-fix crystals.  I added two pieces of onyx beads for the shoulder straps of the ephod.  The ephod is attached to the page only at the top with Washi tape, so it can be lifted up to reveal the scripture beneath.

I used gold Lumiere paint to frame the actual scripture verses on the opposite page.

More later!