Playing with Texture Gels

Sorry - went on vacation and lost my mind! Actually, it rained the entire week, I was sick for 5 days straight and although I did manage to get some cutting, sewing and serging done, didn't do to much actual creating. However, I am slowly getting back into the studio and have been playing with some wonderful textural stuff - texture gels. There are lots of different kinds of texture gels available and they are primarily used with acrylic paints. You can apply them, let them dry and then paint or you can mix your acrylics with the gels. I have glass bead, sand and lava but had not really used them on anything so decided to play. I had sewn up five mermaids (you must think all I make are mermaids!) and after I dyed them, 3 of them didn't turn out as great as I would have liked so I got out the glass bead texture gel and applied it to one to see what it would look like. I didn't get the gel thick enough and when I painted over it with Lumiere, there were lots of blank spaces. I was more careful when I applied the gel to the other 2 mermaids, making sure it was nice and thick. I also discovered that I could create raised points with the gel which looked very cool (not sure you can see it in the photo). Finally, I had some glitter handy so sprinkled it liberally on top. The finished result is incredible! Makes it look like it is glittering underwater and you can see the original dyed fabric underneath. Very cool!

Here is a photo of the mermaid tails that were not covered with any texture gels:

Finally, I thought you might like to see the samples of the sand and black lava so I applied a thin coat of each onto canvas (with glitter again) and then painted over it with 2 different colors of Lumiere. Both the sand and black lava gels leave a color residue on the surface of the fabric (glass bead gel dries clear) so take that into consideration when using it. However, I can't wait to play more with texture! Happy Giraffe! Belinda