As my prints worked well on paper, I decided I wanted to see how they would turn out if I were to print them onto my make-up wipes, as another way of experimenting with more than one collection together.
I therefore sewed together four make-up wipes to make a square would become my canvas to print onto. From my experience, printing on damp paper generally gives a better overall effect than dry. Baring this in mind I made the wipes damp and blotted them with blotting paper to draw out most of the moisture. I then printed onto them with my etching plate.
I found this worked really well on damp wipes, so experimented on dry wipes too to see what worked best. However I actually found there wasn’t really much difference compared with the paper. Both dry and damp gave a clear sharp print. I like the way it incorporates more then one collection then makes a collection out of that. This is something I want to take further.
I have always enjoyed printmaking. I experimented a lot with it last year with collecting due to the idea of making a collection of prints exploring collecting, as they are an effective way to show repetitiveness.
I decided that I would create some prints of the drawings I have been doing of my view points of the everyday. I etched one of my drawings and first tested it on paper.
I feel this gave a nice effect with the black ink contrasting against the white. It worked on dry paper but worked a lot better when the paper was made damp with water, allowing the paper to draw out the ink from the plate easier. I do really like how these have turned out and plan on experimenting further.
As I have been collecting my contact lenses and letting them dry out, I thought about what would happen if I kept them in water like the solution they are in before they are worn, to keep their flexible, soft, round shape.
I filled a bottle with water and placed a few pairs in there after I had worn them before they dried up. I think I would have to collect a lot to be able to use this display effectively as unless the bottle is shook up or you look really closely at the bottom it is hard to see there is even anything in there. Maybe I need to collect more and then see what happens.
For this piece I glued a small selection of my train tickets together to make boxes. I have been finding my collections are most effective when transformed into something or added together in some way as I feel it makes them more interesting. This piece was more of a spur of the moment thing in the studio, I sat looking at them and though, I want to make them into something! And this is the outcome. Not exactly my best piece but an experiment all the same. I think maybe I need to forget about them now with my work. They are not really that personal to me in comparison with my hair and contact lenses, nor are they abject, which is the route I appear to be heading down.
I decided to incorporate hair with my make-up wipes to see how these two collections work merged together. I found with the wipes and receipts it worked really well on the umbrella so decided to try it with hair.
Again like with the net curtain, I tried to sew with my hair as my intial plan was to sew through the wipe with my hair but again I found difficulty in tieing the hair. It was also hard to see so I tried doubling up the hair but this was so fiddley it just frustrated me.
Therefore I used the same method as I did with the curtain and used white cotton to hold it in place.
I like how simple it is but also quite effective I feel by merging two parts of my collections together as one it links them together and creates quite an abject piece by the way in which the wipes interact with the hair and the a lot of the hair appears to be escaping from the boundaries of the thread.
