Photographic hologram

After reading a number of articles on photographic holograms, I was intrigued by the possibilities. The holographic effect is achieved by using two identical photos, one of them on a transparent fabric, separated by a spacer. The articles I read nominated stretcher bars to provide the spacer, but I decided to use an inexpensive paint canvas to provide a frame and to create the space needed to produce the effect.

 Preparing the frame:

I chose an 8”x10” canvas. By turning it over and using the back of it, I had a ‘box’ with wooden sides and a canvas base, with a 5”x7”opening - perfect for a photo. I left the canvas attached to the frame, and discarded the wedges that came with it. I wasn’t sure how much of the inside of the box would be seen once it was all assembled, so I painted the inner sides with black acrylic paint, making sure that there was paint inside the grooves provided for the wedges.

Preparing the photos:

I chose a photo of the beach at the northern tip of Denmark taken on a visit this year. I made some adjustments in Photoshop to brighten and sharpen the photo; then printed it once on cotton for the base, and once on semi-transparent silk organza for the overlay. It is important that the photo on the organza is in the centre of the sheet, but you can be more conservative with the cotton. I used a Jacquard Cotton Sheet bought from www.ozquilts.com.au ($22.95 for a pack of 10), and ExtravOrganza also from ozquilts ($17.95 for a pack of 5). After printing, I cut the cotton sheet to the size of the photo but left the organza sheet whole.

Attaching the first photo to the canvas:

I was not sure how the photo printed on cotton would react if I used a wet glue to attach it to the canvas base, and I knew it would be awkward to get an iron into the box to attach it with vliesofix, so I decided on a two-stage process.

I first attached the photo to a piece of adhesive backed felt with vliesofix, then peeled the backing off and pressed it onto the canvas base of the box with hand pressure. This seems to have been successful.

Attaching the overlay:

I lay the silk organza sheet over the top of the box and carefully and evenly stapled it all around the top. The trick here is to make sure that the image on the overlay is exactly over the base image. Once it was securely fastened I trimmed off any organza overhanging the outer edge of the box and made sure that all the staples were well embedded in the timber around the top of the box.

Finishing:

To complete the picture, I added a frame of stiffened felt (available from Spotlight in a variety of colours) to cover the top edge of the box. I cut it 8”x10” with a 5”x7” cutout in the centre and attached it to the top of the box with gel medium. As a final touch I also used gel medium to attach some small stones I had picked up on the beach. It has held them well.

Notes:

I am not sure that this is the best sort of photo for this technique – perhaps something with more action or colours or contrasts etc might be better. I also now wonder about the necessity of the base photo being printed on fabric. Printing it on photographic paper would make it sharper and clearer which might improve the final effect. Each of these ideas will be tested in my next project!

sloppy silk screening ;-)

ok ... I finally got around to posting something about the fun day we had about 3 weeks ago - messing around with silk screens and squeegees - using acrylic paints on paper, but with the idea that now we have done it - we can go home and do it again on fabric/etc, if we so desire.
We were actually trying out one or 2 of the techniques from this Jane Dunnewold DVD - http://www.interweavestore.com/Quilting/DVDs-Videos/Screen-Printing-Sampler-Download.html

This is the first thing I did:

we used paper stencils ... I put it down on the paper a second time, and of course the stencil (which was on the bottom of the screen) stuck to the paint that was already on the paper ... but I kind of liked the effect so I left most of it there.
These are my things drying on the clothes line when I got home:


and a close up of 2 of them:

I decided to do my own thing - and went outside and found some gum leaves and other plants and used them as a "stencil" - and made several prints adding a bit more paint to what was left after each one.
I also made some bubbles ;-)

(this was when I put the screen down on some paper and started to wash out some of the paint, from the screen, onto the paper - to make a weird coloured bit of paper to use as a background or something, rather than just wash out the paint)
and ... while I am here posting photos - here is some other textile art I finished recently:

it is not quite an art quilt, but it is textile art and it is fabric and stitching ... and I do plan to make a small art quilt using the same idea and probably at least some of the same fabrics ;-)

hopefully I won't be the only one to post photos of the things we did that day - some other people produced some amazing stuff ...
(and a great time was had by all ;-)

Opportunity to be published

Glenys Mann of Fibrearts Australia is planning to publish a date-less diary. One page would contain an image of your work and a week of undated days on the opposite page. She is looking for submissions of images to be included. Please go to this link to get all the details http://fibrearts.jigsy.com/date-less-diary-project 
I participated in the Artist Notebook Project that Glenys organised last year, for completion earlier this year. These are now touring to various sites around the country. It was a lot of fun - filling a 120 page A5 visual diary really get your mind humming.

Liz Rose

Meeting activity - boxes

This is the box I made as a result of our meeting activity last weekend.

It is not the greatest thing I have ever made - in fact I don't like it very much at all as it is rather 'in-your-face'!

However, it was a great learning activity and very satisfying to test how various yarns and fabrics worked with the stiffened felt I used as the background for the box. I was surprised how easily the fabrics and fibres worked through this type of felt from both sides.

I also learnt a couple of things to remember for next time:

• I had not given enough thought to proportions. Whilst I did think about the placement of elements on the finished box, I didn't consider how big they would appear on the box when finished. Whilst various elements (motifs, colour blocks etc) looked OK on the full piece of felting, some of them became much more dominant and overpowering on the finished box.
  
  
• I used one of the templates from an unfolded commercial box and whilst I am happy with the size and shape, I didn't notice until putting my box together that it had been glued on one of the front corners. This was probably not noticeable on the original cardboard box, but it certainly set me a challenge to work out a way of joining that was not too noticeable. I would much prefer to join at the back of the box.

This was a great activity with lots of potential. Thanks Buffy for proposing it, and for generously bringing all the bits you did for it.