Grand Opening/Open House for Studio

The weekend of June 9th is Wild Woman Weekend here so we have decided to make that weekend the one to host our Grand Opening/Open House. I have sooooooo much work that needs to be done, it didn't help that I was locked out of my office for several hours this afternoon ;-) My friend Regina was able to get ahold of my husband, who has the only other key to my office, and he came and unlocked my door! Lets just say I was a little bit frustrated with this experience.

Silk Carrier Rods & More

Finally the twelve colors I dye over the weekend have been rinsed and are now drying - on drying racks I made using wooden stretchers and some fiberglass screen mesh. This method works really well btw. I need to make some more frames this week. I dyed the carrier rods using Country Classic Dyes, this seems to be a less harsh method of dyeing the rods, when I used natural dyes they basically desintigrated in the dye pots. I'll try to post pictures this week.

It's hot and humid here, really humid! I think we are getting Florida's weather but am not a hundred percent sure.

My neck is still bothering me, I'm seeing the doctor for my kidneys' tomorrow but I think I will have my neck looked at as well. I was getting into hubbies truck on Sunday, his is shorter than mine and I forgot this, anyway I cracked my head really good on the door frame. I just had my eyes checked but I'm really starting to think I'm losing my peripheal (sp?) vision as I really should have seen the truck frame moving towards my head.

One Smart Dog!

Check out the video of this dog trying to get the ball that's fallen into a swimming pool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnMRVsLAxg8

Prairie Potholes

Prairie Potholes III

Prairie Potholes II

Prairie Potholes I

I put these up for sale over at my etsy.com store: http://www.kbaxterpackwood.etsy.com I will be posting more artwork over there this week. They can be purchased framed or unframed.

Need a dose of Reality?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH-Z0l24h88&mode=related&search=

Tickled Pink

I'm so tickled my Gelatin Plate Printing with Natural Dyes ranked with Honors as one of the most watched DIY video clips over at YouTube.com!!! Can you believe it! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5h7Bw8Fh2Q

Here's Something Pretty

Life necessitates beauty from time to time, they are blooming here but are quite paltry this year so here's some from last year.

Videos & Life

Ok I'm majorly frustrated as I uploaded six videos to YouTube.com and it's only showing five of them! Well the last one is on making up the gum tragacanth binder hopefully it'll show up soon.

I have a really bad kidney infection, that refuses to go away, I'm having some tests on Thursday to make sure it's not something that worse. Having kidney disease sucks.

Gelatin Plate PDF Coming Soon

Ok I'm trying to figure out how to put a link to the PDF that accompanies the Gelatin Plate Printing video clips. Btw someone was kind enough to tell me which programs to use for editing "still" camera (read web cam or cell phone footage). It's a microsoft product which I have on my computer no less.

Gelatin Plate Printing with Natural Dyes

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kbaxterpackwood I posted for webcasts to Youtube.com I'm too tired, it's almost midnight, to try and figure out how to get them onto the blog right now. It took almost a half hour for each video clip to load to youtube.com (eeegads).

Gelatin Plate Printing with Natural Dyes

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kbaxterpackwood I posted for webcasts to Youtube.com I'm too tired, it's almost midnight, to try and figure out how to get them onto the blog right now. It took almost a half hour for each video clip to load to youtube.com (eeegads).

Here's what happens to the plate as it dries out, it developes pits and cracks. These can be quite useful.

Gelatin Plate Video Clips

Ok I'll try this again!

I'm loading video clips to You Tube I'll post a link later, it's taking awhile to load to youtube. There are five clips in all. Please be patient as I shot these using my webcam and have no way of editing them. The programs I use, Ulead, Pinnacle Studio and Adobe Premiere are all too advanced to edit webcam images; who knew. I have since procured a real video camera that can actually keep up with the digital technology, now to get back into the studio and do some video taping.

And Another Thing

I like, no color that LOVE, Sun Bonnet Sue, and I like Log Cabin Quilts ~

Background Colors and Permission

I'm still working on the background colors. I've finally given myself permisson to come out of the closet on something .... I like pink! However, I'm not ripped with all pinks. I'm tired of feeling like I have to deny which colors I like simply because the social majority has declared it so! Who are these people and why the hell should we care anyway??? So if you like pink, or any other color that is not in favor then come on out of the color closet and enjoy life, after all we only get one life to enjoy and it's a really short one at that.

So in the meantime I'm trying to find a good pink for my blog background, I think I'll end up making something in the studio and then scan it into blogger and go from there. The pinks I really like are the vintage pinks from the 30's to the 50's. We bought a cabinet, for $5.00, for my new studio space and it's interior is painted in a pink like none other I've ever seen before. It's old very old, both the cabinet and the paint.

Video Clip

I'm not sure how to move the video clip box over to the left side of the screen, it just doesn't want to cooperate! Once it's moved the right column will be smaller.

Where did all of the family information go??? I moved it over on my other blog: http://www.survivalkitchen.blogspot.com

Update

The studio is open and going full tilt, more with photos later. Maybe I can figure out how to get this particular blog to archive itself.

Old Gelatin Plate

The plate dried out quite quickly in my basement - about two days - as I never store them in the fridge.

I'll try to get a video clip posted to You Tube, later today, of me working with the natural dyes and the gelatin plate. It all depends on if I can get the video to cooperate, it's been a couple of months since I've worked with any of this and am starting to get a bit rusty (Oh I'm doing some rust dyeing on my day off) at video editing.

Gel Plate with Natural Dyes

Final wash out, note that about one third of the color has washed out, it is HOWEVER, typical and very stable at this point.

After the printing has been done and the fabric is curing.

Two prints, I just rollered the dye onto the whole plate to create background.

Rollered dye on the plate, that I then placed silk dupioni (that had been dyed with a weak cochineal bath) and created the print.

Madder lac extract mixed with gum tragacanth on my mixing plate. That is the dye on the roller/brayer. As you can see it is thick, you can vary the thickness for varying results. I find that the thicker it is the better print you get.

Gelatin Plate

Compost Dyeing now in PRINT!!!

Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Techniques is now in PRINT and is available through my Etsy.com store http://www.kbaxterpackwood.etsy.com Check it out!!! 44 pages of Step-by-step instruction, packed with color photos and is a major improvement over the CDROM version if you ask me.

If there are no copies left email me and I'll post more to my store it would seem the trick to Etsy.com is to add a few items at a time not have hundreds ones store, which makes sense.

What The???

I had a woman looking at my work this morning, bags that I make with my own fabrics, stitch the begeebers out of and then create lovely handles for, and she proceeds to try and disassemble the bag!

She was shocked that I would be horrified, her comment was "well don't you take things apart to see how they are constructed and to see if the construction is quality or not"? Well actually no I don't, and I informed her as much and since the bags were silk I was a little bit more than put out. She kept claiming that she wasn't doing this to try to copy my bags - yeah whatever get your mitts of my stuff lady.

So the twenty million question is how does one politely tell someone to get their mitts off of your work??? I'm not always known for tact and I know this so I tend to keep my mouth shut so as to not dig myself a grave but come one why would someone do something like this??? Personally I find the behaviour not only odd but inconsiderate - I just don't know how to tell this to people when they behave in such a manner.