Surfacing Alphabet Project-Letter A

"Surfacing", a Yahoo internet group that graciously accepted me as a member, has kicked off 2009 with a year long project relating to the alphabet. Each letter of the alphabet serves as the inspiration for a surface design project.

I chose almond stamping as my "A" project. Why? I had spent an afternoon with my husband looking at his native american indian relic collection. It is always awe inspiring to look at tools and artistic pieces from prehistoric times. The primitive people used what ever was at hand to express themselves. I looked around my house for something related to A that was natural and unusual that I could incorporate into a design. The first thing I found was an almond. I cut up a couple and set to work using this unusual tool.

The nuts were shelled and roasted. However, the meat of the nut still had a considerable amount of oil. I dried the nut halves with a paper towel but there was plenty of oil still in the nut meat that served an unexpected purpose as the project progressed.

A heavy LV alginate was mixed and allowed to refrigerate overnight.

The fabric pieces I used were 8" x 10" silk broakcloth remnants from a previous project. They had been dyed a light silver grey. The additional tools and materials involved were a 2" piece of cellulose sponge, a yard of serger tail, a 4" brayer, a 1" foam brush, sewing tweezers (to hold the nut!), crimson red and black green label Jacquard acid dyes.

My intention was to create 2 pieces of the same colorway that both incorporated the almond as a design element. Three pieces were produced that were interesting to me without further embellishment. Note that the almond oil acted as a partial resist in the stamping. It allowed the base color to peek through and appear irridescent.

Would I use an almond as a stamp again? Probably. I think it has a place in my work when I need a small design element for highlight. It would be also be possible, but tedious, to use it to create a quasi-animal print. I like its varied and organic footprint.

Now I am thinking "B"!