Finding myself with a mostly free Sunday, I decided to try a few arty projects inspired by Alisa Burke‘s Canvas Remix.

I’d bookmarked this one to try. I didn’t have a canvas bag, but I had an old burgundy cotton shopping bag whose lettering had come off when washed. I figured if I didn’t like the result I wouldn’t mind throwing it away, and if I did then it was a good recycling project.

Here’s the bag after I painted the outside, choosing some complimentary colours in my ‘excess’ acrylic paints collection – colours I’d picked up at garage sales and such, but didn’t tend to use:

And here it is after I tried out my foam stamps on it:

To finish it I need to get buy water based polyurethane to seal it and handles. So far I’m liking how it’s turned out, though I do think it needs some smart looking handles for it to throw off it’s old cotton shopping bag heritage.

During the drying time, I tried a few other things. Firstly, I took the iPhone cover I’d doodled on (but which, unfortunately, went all smudgy) and painted it black. When that was dry I added brushstrokes of red and orange paint:

When that was dry I tried Alisa’s method of writing over paint, using a Sharpie to write words relating to the useful things you can use an iPhone for:

And then I finished it with a coat of gloss medium & varnish. I’m really happy with how this looks and I’m tempted to give my new iPhone cover the same treatment.

When printing, I roll off the excess paint on the roller onto laser printed pages from the recycling pile, and I’ve found I really like the textures and colour combinations I get:

So I tried printing onto these sheets. I had varied results.

Some I liked, some I didn’t. I found the ones with repeated patterns like the one on the right below looked good, but ones with pictorial shapes were a bit too literal and cutesy.

I recently made a few stamps out of bits and pieces from the garage, inspired by these posts on the Daisy Yellow blog:

So I gave them a try, too:

I also really like the way the paint builds up on the sheet of plastic I use as a sort of palette for the roller.

I’m wondering if I could use paper or card instead, then use the ‘palette’ as a background for some kind of artwork as well.

I love how trying one thing gives me other ideas to try. When I was done for the day I wrote notes in my sketchbook, listing ways to refine methods, experiments to undertake another time, and materials to buy. Which is so very organised, for me.