Embroidered Collage

I refuse to name it Bubbles, but that is how I have been thinking about this idea since I first had it back in July when I stitched the pulled thread focal point.  I had been hoping to get to it earlier, but lost the stitched piece for awhile.  I was thrilled to find it again and began working on the background.  This post should really have been in three parts, but since I forgot to take in-progress pictures you're getting all the information at once.

I had originally anticipated the background would involve more materials.  I pulled some papers and fabric and started thinking aobut compositions, but ended up paring it down to just using the fabric.  I adhered a square of the fabric to the corner of ungessoed canvas, then painted over the canvas and portions of the fabric in deep, dark oceanic blues and greens.  That part went very well and I was happy.

Then I decided to print over sections of the background with the bubble design from the foam printing plates I had prepared for the hand-decorated papers.  This failed miserably.  The bubbles didn't really show up.  The surface wasn't flat enough for the depth of the indentations in the foam.  I did get a few faint impressions but mostly ended up just marring my surface with lighter colors.  I felt like I had just ruined what I did the previous night. 

Then, I went to clean up and discovered that the paint had gone through the un-gessoed but painted canvas and I had painted my floor!  Happily it is a wood laminate and it was still soon enough that I got everything cleaned up before the acrylic cured up completely.  Overall, though, it was not a good evening.

I still wanted bubbles.  I decided to use my watercolor crayons, but, instead of brushing acrylic medium all over them as I had done in the past, this time I would use a more controlled approach.  I drew in circles in one deep turquoise and then shaded the bubbles in a handful of different colors.  I took a small paintbrush and a puddle of liquid medium and used that instead of water to activate the colors.  It worked wonderfully.  I was able to keep the shading and the circles both that night, and the next, when I coated the whole piece with acrylic medium to seal it.  Using the liquid medium had sealed the watercolor crayon marks enough that they hardly smeared when exposed to liquid again.  My idea worked.  The background looked fantastic.  It's not what I originally imagined, but I absolutely love it.