Remaining Rainbow Book Pages

I've finished the remaining pages for my rainbow book. The back of the yellow page is above. First I fused some yellow cotton to felt. The light peach color of the felt seemed to show through so I fused another layer of cotton. The fibers going across the page are perle cotton, embroidery floss, some vintage silk buttonhole twist I found at a thrift store, and a collection of fibers that came together in a package. Those fibers are couched down by hand, while the others are sewn on with a running stitch. I have to say that sewing through felt, two layers of cotton, and two layers of MistyFuse was not the easiest thing I have ever done. I needed to use a rubber jar opener to get a grip on the needle to pull it through the layers when I used the heaviest perle cotton. One of the fibers from the package is glued on as an edging.

Below is the front of the yellow page. Again there are two layers of cotton fused to felt. I used a direct-to-fabric stamping technique with gold and yellow ink pads to add a little stronger color around the edges. To make the pocket, I laid various yellow fibers on tulle, sandwiched it between water soluble stabilizer, and stitched it in a grid pattern. Then I rinsed it in cool water to dissolve the stabilizer. There is a chenille wire wrapped with the fibers stitched on the left side. The tags in the pocket are decorated using a variety of techniques and they each have a word I associate with yellow--cheerful, energetic, warm, etc.






Above is the front of the orange page and below is the back of the orange page. They have several layers of fabric paint--more than I anticipated using. It took a while because it had to dry between coats of paint.

First I painted wet white fabric with yellow and a little orange. Then I added an orange wash on one side. Next I stamped on the fabric with more orange paint. On the front I used several sponges. On the back I used a foam brush, a wine cork, a cosmetic sponge, and a nine-patch stamp I made from PenScore foam and a cake cooling rack. I also stenciled through some mesh from a fruit bag. The next step was more stamping with an opaque fabric paint. For the front, I carved some stamps from erasers. You can see the stamping on the right side of the thin horizontal lines. On the back, I used bubble wrap. Look for the little circles on the left side of the page. After it dried, the opaque paint stood out too much so I added another orange wash.

Finally, I used Super Copper Lumiere to add some thin lines on both the front and the back. I thought it might look cool to have some accent lines with Indigo Lumiere. It didn't. So I painted over those with a second line of Super Copper. The front has three small beads at the intersection of the lines. Because I couldn't find the right color of ribbon for the edging, I painted some with the orange paint.





Above is the front of the red page. It has turned out to be my favorite. I had some hand painted deep pink fabric, but it was not quite as red as I wanted. I sprayed it with some red Memories Mist to darken it to a rich rose. It is fused to felt. Using all the different techniques to make the squares and rectangles was lots of fun. Each of the pieces has the decorative top layer either fused or glued to a rich rose fabric fused to felt. The edges of the felt were colored red with a Sharpie marker, and the gold leafing pen was used to edge the top of each piece. Gold ribbon is used as the edging.

The techniques used are:
Top Row: painted paper towel fused and quilted to felt, Tyvek painted and heat distressed
Second Row: alcohol ink on shiny paper, foil glue-stenciled on fabric, alcohol ink on aluminum foil
Third Row: Tyvek painted and heat distressed, cheesecloth fused to fabric then painted with red and gold paint, foil glue-stenciled to fabric, painted paper towel fused and quilted to felt
Fourth Row: Angelina film fused to fabric, cheesecloth fused to fabric then painted with red and gold paint, Angelina fused together and fused to fabric
Fifth Row: Angelina film fused to fabric, foil glue-stenciled to fabric, alcohol ink on vellum paper, Tyvek painted and heat distressed
Bottom Row: Angelina film fused to fabric, Tyvek painted and heat distressed, alcohol ink on vellum paper, cheesecloth fused to fabric then painted with red and gold paint

Below is the back of the red page. I used the same fabric on the back as I did on the front. It is stamped with Halo Pink-Gold Lumiere, and the stamped areas were edges with a gold leafing pen. Gold trim is glued on for the edging.



The next step is to finish painting the dowels that will hold the book up as a screen. I had lots of fun making this book about my personal rainbow. It's not your mother's Roy G. Biv!