Blouse

Rust dyed cotton blouse over dyed with logwood purple yeilded this lovely charocoal with deep purple tones.

Natural Dyed Silk Velvet Fabrics

Silk Velvet Fabric now available in my shop

Rust Dyed Blouse

Rust Dyed Blouse which is currently residing in a logwood vat.

Acrylic Plate

General Etching Pen with replacable tip.

Acrylic plate for etching for printmaking.

Studio

My retro vintage oranged crushed velvet wing back chair.

I finally got the chair into the studio, I'm not sure but I think I may have used a few muscles I haven't used in years! The view from the doorway - my studio isn't really that large something like 10 x 13 feet, less actually because the doorway is on the corner which has been lopped off, old victorians are a lot of fun. My head hurts today I wacked it and pretty good last night on the drafting table, bent over to pick something up which was all the encouragement I needed to move the table out of the room permanently.

Blogger changes

For some reason I no longer have control over my blogger postings, how it's going to be presented. If this is a permanent change then I guess I will go else where for my blogging, I like having COMPLETE control over my blogs.

Studio Clean Up

Spent the day cleaning and rearranging my design studio. I'm not sure WHY my blog is lining up like this except that someone decided they needed to make me unhappy today! Hoping that this NOT one of the "new exciting changes here at blogger" moves because if it is I'm moving my blogs elsewhere!

Silk Cocoons - Green Collection

Fresh Buds

Lemon Yellow

Spring Green

Grass Green

Apple Green - Available in my store

Glenn Beck and Tomorrow is Pay Day!!!

Making my list and checking it twice and any corp that has pulled it's ads from Glenn Beck will NOT get my dollars tomorrow - which is payday! For those of you who believe in FREEDOM of SPEECH, whether you agree with Glenn or not I ask that you do the same thing!

To make this canning related I will be picking up canning supplies tomorrow and won't be buying from three local stores due to their support of the ad bans.

Madder Root on Cotton and Monitor Colors

In case your monitor is reading tans and beige be rest assured that the colors in my Madder Root on Vintage Trims post are in fact peach, coral, and orange! AND there's even a bright neon yellowish to orangish on the nylon cotton blend. NOTE that colors DO vary from monitor to monitor, and my monitor is set to CMYK mode.

While dyeing cotton fabrics does involve a certain amount of work bright colors CAN be obtained on cotton and linen fabrics! Don't be discouraged by what other's say bright colors ARE obtainable on cotton and linen. I've been dyeing cotton for over 15 years now and I'm living proof that it is indeed possible.

Mono Print with Golden Paints

Below: Golden's Thick Body Paint, Indian Yellow, on the foam plate. Above: First print printed onto commercial stationary.

Will have to mix some extender with the Golden Paints they dry out wayyyyyyyyyyy too fast! I thought I'd try it with just straight paint to see just how fast the paint does dry out.

Roma Tomatoes

Various varieties of Roma Tomaotes.

Madder Root Dyed Crochet Lace

I posted information at the Natural Surfaces Zine on this process.

Madder Root Dyed Vintage Crochet Lace

Madder Root Dyed Vintage Lace and Trims

Vintage lace and trims I picked up at a yard sale this summer, some are antiques. Everything has been scoured by washing twice in hot water - to get rid of the smell, then boiled with soda ash for two hours. The items were then mordanted with alum and soaked for two days in the alum vat, I then dyed everything with Madder Root Extract I left them to soak in the madder root vat for two days. The brighter yellow items are made of nylon hence the color.

Mono printing

I over printed yesterday's reverse print, which didn't turn out so well the print looks really good with color coming from behind, though if I were to do it again I'd make the top print more saturated.

This last one is my favorite out of the bunck, even if it is a little crooked on the paper. The object in the background to the right is a windmill, they are springing up all over the rural landscape here so it's only natural I would incorporate them in my work. ;-)

Today's Dye Session

Today's dye session consisted of a madder root extract vat and a logwood purple extract vat. The madder root vat contains a combination of cotton and linen vintage trims. The logwood vat contains vintage damask napkins and linen napkins.

More Mono Printing

The first three, was still working out the ink consistancy on the brayer.

Printed on PFD cotton fabric that has been prewashed, just not ironed.

First run is now completed.

Not bad for a first run it's been about 5 years since I've done any serious printing.

Foam Tray Mono Prints

Foam Meat Tray incised and inked up.

Acetate envelope that I used as a ink palette - the ultimate in recycling.

On artist paper

On an envelope that was painted with oilbars and acrylic paints.

On aritst paper.