Burn It Up!

Today's focus is tyvek. Tyvek is an amazing art material. I just love it! You can buy it by the yard now, but I have a bunch of it from a hundred years ago. If you're not familiar with it, the Postal Service envelopes are made out of it. Not the paper ones, but the ones that feel like an extremely lightweight fabric and are impossible to rip.

The fun thing about tyvek is that it takes color very well, and you know I love color! So far, I like the Dye-Na-Flows the best, as they turn out so crisp and vivid. But I've also used acrylic paint, markers, and Neocolors all with great success.

Yeah, coloring and painting are fun, but here's the best part: tyvek hates heat. It shrivels, curls, and eventually, if you heat it long enough, it disintegrates. FABulous news for surface texturists! I've used it in a lotta different ways, and I'm sure I haven't exhausted the possibilities by any means. I'm currently in the middle of two projects that incorporate tyvek and I hope to get those posted later today. My heat gun finally bit the dust at the end of the mailbox thing, and I'm (IM!)patiently waiting for my hubby to dig up his industrial-strength one for me.

In the meantime, here are a coupla pix to show you what it can do

These above are ATCs. I colored a piece of tyvek, then stitched it to a piece of fabric, timtex and cardstock. I then blasted it with the heat gun. Below is a post card made with rectangles of heat-blasted tyvek (the same process as above, then I just cut it apart and attached to a post card). I added brads and copper wire.

Sorry for the weird photographic angles in these pix. I ripped the lightbox down, as we're shifting rooms around here, and I snapped these off quickly. They are truly sqaure, er, I mean rectangle. ;o)

I wish you a creative day full of ideas and fun!! Ciao! ~debmarie :oP