my crazy art project

For the past weeks I have been going three dimensional with all my art classes. I am such a locked-in 2-D person myself that this is a challenge. It has been fun, but messy. I have almost all my classes, (but not the Kinder and 1st) doing paper-mache projects. We have two foot long Chinese dragons, the Nike of Samothrace, Egyptian pyramids, terracotta soldiers of China, statues of Athena, and more. Quite a sight when we walk into the art room.

Next week we will all begin a batik on fabric project. To prepare, I have been making a sample at home.
Lots of mess and "accidents" and questioning what will happen next? This is an unpredictable process.
I don't want to risk using hot wax technique with young children, so we are using a washable gel glue that has been recommended by art teachers I follow on their blogs.

I decided to make a table cover  using this design from a water color I made last fall.

I placed the sheer fabric on top of my watercolor and just traced lightly with a pencil over my outlines. I will figure out later if my pencil outlines are going to show in the final. Maybe that was my first mistake.

Then, I began to go over my design with the blue gel glue. Next step, wait for all the glue to dry. Speeding up the drying time with a blow dryer did not work, I had to wait overnight.

Next morning, I began to paint over the dried glue with a watered down acrylic wash. I found out that wherever I had not closed in a shape with the glue completely, the washes ran over like crazy. So I will have to figure out how to make the blue running into yellow areas come out to look like a planned event?

 I will show the final product but I have to let it all dry again. I need to apply more washes but I am worried about a lot of messy bleeding of my next colors, reds and oranges into the blue which will make a mud. So maybe more drying time and then some more drying time and the final washing out of the glue to see what we have.