The Very Busy Month Of June

As you can see I haven’t blogged for some time.  June was a really busy time for me.  I was creating two brand new classes…and then trying them out on my “guinea pigs”!  Postcard Panache was the first class. I had the actual idea for this class last summer, but like anything else, if there is no demand for something, my ideas may remain just that…ideas.  But in March this year, two ladies from Louisville put a demand on me for this class, so I worked hard to get samples made and get it prepared so they could have a full day of learning.  These two ladies came to my house for the day and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  Now I just have to get it up on my Lectures/Workshops page.  There is always something to do!

Postcard Panache is a class geared to teaching people how to use all of the new artsy products that are  on the market.  I sell all these products at quilt shows, but demos are important because people don’t quite know what to do with Angelina fibers  and other items.  So, in postcard format, I showed these ladies a number of ways they could use bottled inks, Smooch Spritz, Angelina fibers and film, BoNash bonding powder, foiling glue, foil, stencils, etc.  They had quite a play day and were very complimentary, which makes me feel happy that they were so pleased.

The second class I created is a screen printing class.  I finally settled on a name for it no one else has used, at least not that I know of…Spontaneous Screen Printing.  Several gals from the St. Louis area and other friends of mine signed up and declared that they  had a great time and learned a great deal, so I feel I have done my job.  It is a lot of work creating and planning a brand new class, then packing everything for it.  At the same time I was planning a demo on Friday for the artisans center where the class would be taught the following day.  Due to the extreme messiness of using dye paints to demo I opted to do something totally different!  Which made me even more work…what was I thinking?  Again, it was a project that had been in the back of my mind for some time, so in a way, by demo-ing gelatin printing using paints, I got some “work” done for future artwork…AND I got a commission out of it too, which was very unexpected, but welcome.

Monday

Today, my intent was to get started on printing some silk scarves in Christmas colors for my opening reception.  Well, getting started is about all I’m getting done.

First the scarves have to be soaked in white vinegar, then they have to dry.  That takes some time.  Then I made a silk screen with glue…and now it is drying.  So I decided to blog while I’m sitting here waiting for everything to dry!

First, I gotta tell you about all the new flavors of fudge I came across this weekend.  I’m in fudge heaven. I went to a craft festival in Harrisburg to purchase some lotion bars and other products for Christmas.  I came home with MUCH more!

First, the fudge.  We taste tested pumpkin, dreamsicle, white chocolate with apricots and walnuts, white chocolate with cherries and pecans…oh. my. gosh.  I’m in love with the two white chocolate fudges.  I purchased these to send to my mother-in-law for her birthday.  She is a fudge lover, so that is usually what I get her.  I was going to order some from a catalog until I saw this locally made fudge.  I purchased both the white chocolate fudges and some Rocky Road that I knew she would like.  Of course, since I brought it home with me, she now has to share some of it with me! She can’t eat 3 lbs. of fudge by herself anyway!  I have since found a recipe online for the white chocolate with apricots and walnuts.  I will definitely be trying that recipe this year.

drool.......

Yesterday, I crocheted the other wrist warmer.  I had made one and embellished it and had never gotten around to making the second one.  I finished it and then fished out a pattern for a flower that is used on a strand to wear around your neck.  So I had to try those out….

Cute? I think they are.

Little crocheted flowers

I love the yarn.  The red and purple flowers are made from Deborah Norville’s Everyday soft worsted anti-pilling yarn.  There’s no fuzzies on it.  It’s very nice yarn.

So now I put a question to you….should I use this one on my wrist warmers?….

 

…or this one?

I’ll probably just end up putting a row of buttons on the left one, but I did think it would be fun to have different embellishments on each one.  These are fingerless and fun to wear!

Scarlet Fields’ Texting Mittens

My friend Scarlet has created an item that is taking the world by storm! (Well, our little world anyway.  She did just get into a shop in Wisconsin!)  She originally created what has become “texting mittens” because the area she did her painting in was cold and her hands got cold, so she came up with the idea of gloves that had no fingers in them.  They are made out of felted wool.  Scarlet scrounges through yard sales and other places for cheap sources of wool.  She then felts it by washing it many times in hot water before it is felted.  She came up with the idea of calling them “texting mittens” and that has helped them sell.  She can’t keep them in stock!  She also uses lots of vintage trims, buttons and jewelry to deck them out.  And they are SOOOO cute.  I’m wild about them.  My pair is being created as I write. ;=)  Here are a couple of photos of them to whet your appetite…and you can go to her blog to see more.

Aren’t they the bomb?!

Go see more here!  She makes awesome jewelry using vintage stuff too.

My Goodies From Paducah

I didn’t need much…I didn’t spend much.  But I got everything I wanted.

Let’s see….there’s some toile tissue paper and some black and cream diamond tissue paper…I had to have them to make some paper cloth with.  If you don’t know what that is…see the tutorial on my sidebar.

Someone was getting rid of their Smooch spritzes very cheaply,and I had planned to give them a try, so I purchased a few of them.  These are paint in a little spray bottle.  They will be great to do a spray background on cloth or paper and to spray on stencil designs.  When I get a few done I’ll show ya’.

Base extender from ProChem.  This is so that I can work with some water soluble media on screens.  The base extender will seal the designs once they are down.  This is what Kerr Grabowski uses, so I wanted to try that.

1/2 yard of a Civil War reproduction print.  It’s for my stash because I still have Civil War quilts to make…someday.  Susan Spineto split this yard with me.

Distress Ink…always fun and in a color I didn’t have.  I like to crumple paper and rub this across the peaks of the crumples.  Fun.

One black ink pad…because I need one and the archival scrapbooking tape.  I ran out of this stuff since I’ve been mounting my small series called “Flow” onto some Bristol board backing.  I can’t buy this stuff in Carmi, so I have to look for it when I am away from home shopping.

I did purchase some wholesale items for my business.  Lots of stencils from Embellishment Village and a couple of new stamps that I have some ideas to use with Angelina fibers.  Look for samples later on after I have time to play with them a bit.  The stencils are for sale…they are 6 inch stencils and they are $4.40 each.

Because of the rising river waters, the quilt show was taken out of its usual place at the Expo and Convention Centers.  It was split up in various locations in town.  We had no problem getting to any of the places and finding parking.  The AQS team did a great job because as I understand it, the decision to move the show was pretty last minute.  They had a lot of scrambling to do.  But it was a great time for us as usual.

Various And Sundry Things

By my calculations, it’s almost 10 years since I started dyeing my own cloth. Ten years…sounds like such a long time!  Actually it’s the same amount of time we have been living here in southern Illinois.  It was 10 years ago this month or in April (can’t remember which), that I took a dyeing class…and it’s been uphill ever since.  Wow. 10 years.  I feel like such a pro!

What else have I been doing?  In between shows and teaching I do get to play around once in a while.  A couple of weeks ago I tried my hand at embossing black silk velvet. I used a rubber stamp with hand writing on it…cool, huh!

Naw…you’re not supposed to be able to read it!

At the Bloomington quilt show, my demo helper was a bit shy about trying to paint a face with Tsukineko inks, so I took the plunge.  It’s actually easier than I thought it would be.  I used a tracing of a face, so how hard is that?  Start with the lightest colors and work your way up.  She is actually not finished as I will do  more highlighting and shading on her and I haven’t painted the eyebrows yet, but I think she is a pretty cool redhead.  This was painted using aloe vera gel mixed with the inks, a trick from the ever cool Judy Coates Perez.

She has red sparkles in her hair too….I’m going to share how that was done in a minute.

Here is the fish I painted using Tsukineko inks.  At the Bloomington show, someone reminded me of something I had wanted to make a sample of…I simply added it to my fish sample…

Bo-Nash bonding agent is a fusible that comes in a can and you sprinkle it like salt.  It even looks like salt!  So I sprinkled it in some places on the water and in the redhead’s hair, then laid some foil over it, heated it with an iron…and voila!  Sparkling sprinkles!  This is very fun.  And I sell the Bo-Nash fusible and the foil, so call me or email if you want some. I think I will start putting sparkles on lots of stuff now…this is just way too easy.