Painting with the sun

Brand new viruses this past week- preschools are cesspools. 🙂

Two icky feeling kids (of course, they didn’t feel quite icky enough to rest it off quietly like I’d like to do) needed some entertainment. So, we tried something I’ve wanted to try for a long time- heliographic painting/printing- making prints with the sun.

For a really great explanation of the process, turn to one of my favorite sources for info when I want to try a new fabric dye/paint process. We used Setacolor transparent paints, since I had them out to paint the rainbow stripes on the ribbing in one of the KCW dresses- but, I have some Dyna-flo floating around, and I’d like to try really watering down some craft acrylics at some point.

The softest, smooshiest leaves and flowers left the more crisp outlines- and I promise that the fabric is ironed in that photo (aside from the creases from it being folded). The process leaves those cool paint trails that makes this .99/yd fabric look a lot like a pretty silk.

I also tried some 100% canvas drop cloth with card stock cut-outs- I went back and did a quick outline along the stars with Pentel fabric pastels.

The kids’ fabric will turn into bean bags (if there’s one thing we need more of, it’s stuff to lob at each other!) and the blue stars will sit around until I come up with something for it.

All in all, though- it was a pretty easy way to kill a couple of hours while on quarantine, and they had fun show-and-tells when they went back to school. 🙂