New Blog Posts

Welcome, new readers! Just wanted to give you a heads up…there are new blog posts…

Now for the Fun! here

More Monoprinting here

This ‘N That here

and more!

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.

First Strathmore Workshop

Strathmore is hosting more workshops this year.  The first one is being taught by Traci Bautista.  Here is my first week’s work…er…play.

There are layers of stuff on here…Smooch Spritz inks sprayed over resists and plastic canvas, acrylic paints, acrylic inks, markers of all kinds, white-out pen, and oil pastels last.  The neat thing about these workshops for me is they help me get acquainted with different products that I have not used before.

At The Gallery Part 2

Here’s a couple more pieces of my exhibit that have not been seen on my blog before.

Sticks and Stones #3

Rust dyed cotton sateen, silk screening, stenciling, applique, hand writing, paint, ink, dyes, stitching with polyester thread.

Sticks and Stones #4

Rust dyed feed sack, discharge dyed cotton sateen, silk screened, stenciled and stamped, paint, dyes and automatic dish washing liquid and other discharging products, hand writing, inks, stitching with polyester thread.

Workshop #3, Week 2

I posted earlier some of the pages I painted with fluid acrylics as backgrounds for Roz Stendahl’s class I am taking online.  Here is the Week 2 reveal.  Since I’m not that much of a sketch-er, I decided to save time (at least at this point) and use cutouts from photography that I do.

Mum Garden

Roz Stendahl’s Workshop At Strathmore Begins

I played last night at creating backgrounds for Roz’ class. I enjoyed it immensely. I did use some acrylic inks to splatter on the pages, but they seemed to dry v…e…r…y slowly, so I am not pleased with them. I am wondering if the brand or the age of the inks might be the issue. I used a Crafter’s Workshop circle grid stencil and distress ink pads to make the designs. Distress ink is probably not going to be waterproof going forward, but we shall see. I enjoyed playing with the colors and textures.

Mixed Media Visual Journal

I REALLY like the mixed media paper…not as heavy as the watercolor, but takes the wet media very well.

So now I am making a list of Golden Fluid acrylic paints I need…I pretty much used up the only yellow I had.

The next photo is the 140 lb. watercolor journal.

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.

The Same Day

Here are some more bags I have stitched up.  However, according to comments on the previous post, the boxed bottoms have won….so these will be getting pleats momentarily.

The Next Day

Ok, I need some help.  I was thinking about making the bags a little different than I usually do….but then I couldn’t resist making some with a boxed bottom.  You tell me which you like best.

Is it this way?

Or this way?

They are pretty cute sitting up….

Today

I  love what I do.  I love my work.  Looking at inventory after the past weekend, I decided I needed to dye a few more scarves and make a few more small bags.  I am almost out of the ArtFul cloth zippered bags.  And so this a.m. finds me printing cloth.  I have 11 ready to stitch!

Killing time waiting for them to dry (actually, I’m taking a break), I was looking at my favorite pages on Facebook and came across something everyone might be interested in. Linda Matthews has gathered 250 free handbag and tote pattern links from across the web all on one page.  There are so many cute bags on there!  Now I want to make some just for fun.  I have added the link permanently to my sidebar under her name, but here it is too. Free patterns for purses and bags.