Ebullient

I immediately thought of bubbles for the word ebullient. I know people with ebullient personalities and they act " bubbly" to me. So when I thought of bubbles, I thought of scuba diving and the bubbles that rise to the surface as divers dive.



It just happens that my boyfriend is a world-traveling scuba diver and he and his dive mates take wonderful underwater pictures, so I wanted to incorporate some of these pictures in my work. But I also wanted to challenge myself, and I didn't want to print them on fabric.


I investigated several different techniques and decided to try printing on metal. I ordered the metal material from "Dick Blick". I had seen several demonstrations of Golden's Digital Grounds and decided to try that. I primed the metal with the digital ground, putting on two separate coats and allowing drying time between. I taped the prepared metal to carrier sheets and printed the pictures onto the metal. I loved that they exceeded my expectations and came out sharp and clear on the metal.


I had prepared the background with an underwater batik scene I fused to Timtex. I cut the metal photos into circular shapes to represent bubbles. I then free-motion machine stitched the metal to the background and quilted some wavy lines around the background. The edges are satin stitched. I attahed grommets to match on the upper edges as a hanging device. I used left-over printed metal cut into bubble shapes for the back and label and glued those on the back.

As a bonus, I presented the piece to my boyfriend for his birthday and he loves it, And I loved this challenge and am trying to use printed metal in other ways.
Cathy Ortelle