Paintsticks, Stencils, and Frogs-- Oh My

So I decided to do a frog for my Small, Green, and Gorgeous piece.

I made a stencil from freezer paper and ironed it to a piece of blue hand-dye.  Using a brush, I colored in the stencil with Leaf Green paintstick.  Then I read the directions for the challenge.

Whoops.  It was supposed to be made using recycled and/or found stuff.  So I set this aside and created this here, using the aforementioned recycled, repurposed, and found stuff.

I set the frog on hand-dye aside and kind of forgot about it.

Fast-forward to today.  At Quilt Expo, I discovered some new colors of paintsticks at Laura Murray's booth -- Lime Green!  And some others.   So of course, they had to come home with me.
I immediately thought of the frog when I saw the Lime Green(!) paintstick and remembered the punchinella I had purchased last spring in Chicago.  At the time, I was planning on using it for stenciling (polka dots!), but I've been too busy with other stuff to try it out.

While waiting for the washing machine to do its thing, I thought I'd test drive the new paintsticks (Lime Green!) on the frog.  I retrieved the frog from the oops pile, heat set it with my iron, ironed it to some freezer paper for stability and ironed the stencil I had made back on.

Then I grabbed the punchinella (which is also called sequin waste) and, using a small stencil brush, added some of the Lime Green (!)
paintstick for warts.  I used a little Emerald paintstick on the belly of the frog and added an eye with the brown paintstick.

The thing about brushing on paintstick color is that you really can't see it while the stencil is in place.  But when you remove it -- wow!  The color is amazing.  Not subtle at all.

You can do subtle, you just have to be careful to use color with less contrast and a (much) lighter hand with the paintstick.

So now the frog is curing -- it has to sit around for a few days -- the heavier the application of paint, the longer it must wait -- before heat-setting it.

I use my iron on the cotton setting with the fabric in between two pieces of parchment paper so I don't get paint on my iron or ironing board.  It needs to be heat set to "complete the chemical reaction that occurs when the paint dries,"  according to the information I found on Laura Murray's site.

Then the fabric can be washed to remove any residual oil from the paintsticks.  Dry-cleaning is not recommended because the solvents will remove the color.

I like these because they're like really big crayons (who doesn't like crayons?) and they don't change the hand of the fabric.

Also, there aren't a lot of things that you can use to put light color on dark fabrics that don't stiffen the fabric -- iridescent paintsticks are fabulous for this.