Flower Power of a Different Sort !

Every once in awhile I get a notion or an idea or hear a whisper from my muse telling me to try something or to do a certain something with some fabric or pictures. Often these ideas get filed away in my brain and now more often I am trying to capture them in my art journal. We will see how long I can keep up with that practice. :) Anyway last week I did some more fabric and linen dyeing and I threw in a long sleeved white Land's End T-shirt that I had picked up at Goodwill.

This is the back of the shirt after the dyeing. The front was very similar to this with a big swath of mostly white running diagonaly across the front. The sleeves were well covered with color. there was too much white across the front for my taste. So Cue the muse; "You could fill that space with color using different fabrics or paints or markers......"
Just last week I took a workshop at Artistic Artifacts with Quilt artist Cyndi Souder, on using the Tsukineko Inks to color fabric but the effects are much more subtle than what I was envisioning here. I love what can be done with the Japanese inks but this shirt was calling for big bold color.
So out came my Zig Markers from my scrap booking days in Oklahoma. I have a complete set that I had not touched in years and was not even sure that they were still liquid. They are still strong and juicy and ready to go. I was thrilled as this fits right in with my ongoing efforts to use what I already have!!
I Did not think to take photos till I was well involved in the project so you are going to have to use your imagination here.

So to start, I used my Superfine Faber-Castell black Pitt pen to doodle on the shirt. I put a plastic bag inside the shirt to stop any bleed through of color. In the picture above towards the bottom you can see some of the faint doodle markings that I then filled in with the ZIG markers.
All of these pens are waterproof, light fast, acid free and can be set with heat.

This quickly became a project that I found very relaxing and fun and I got to the point where I had to tell myself to stop adding more black doodles and fill in the ones that I had already drawn!!
Once I had filled in the color, I took the Brush PITT marker and outlined all of the doodles. As you can see I doodled on the left sleeve front,

and I added another doodle to the center back. Then I threw the shirt in the drier on the highest setting and today I will go over thew hole piece with a very hot iron.

I think I will wear this shirt to a quilting class that I have on Thursday with Laura Wasilewski, at Artistic Artifacts. Laura is a quilter who adores color so I think this will be appropriate!!

So if you have any scrap booking markers languishing in your art space , take a second look at them and see what you can transform!!! It is amazing what a bit of dye and some color strokes can do to Upcycle a thrift store find!!!!!
Happy Doodling!!!