Tis the Season Part Deux

Queen Anne's Lace No. 1
Thread stitched painted timtex.

I love this piece, it was a lot of fun to make, even if it did drive hubs nuts with all of the loose threads I left on the surface.  But that's what make it so much fun to make, so much so that my plans for this evening are to make more pieces just like this one.  The loose threads make the work come alive and while it sounds redundant the photos do not do this piece justice!

What have you created recently that bucked the norm to make your soul pop, giggle, and sing?

Available in my Shop. 

Tis the Season!

Queen Anne's Lace No. 2 
Encaustic Painting
4x4x2 inches

I've been loading artwork into my Big Cartel Shop today, so far I have photographed and loaded six items.  I think for me the hardest part about listing my artwork is not that it'll go live with someone else, or that people will pay the price I'm asking for my original art, it's describing it so that you understand what I have created.

Then again I could be over thinking all of this, it wouldn't be the first time.

I'm glad I took the time to rephotograph my artwork, after reading a recent article in Professional Artist Magazine "Less is More: Choosing Photos for your Marketing Efforts" (page 32 Dec2014/Jan2015 issue) it was well worth the effort.  And I still have a ton more to learn about good photography,

Mark Making with Nature VIDEO Series Mega Sale!!!

Black Friday thru Cyber Monday Sale

Mark Making with Nature Video Series 

Now $9.95

Mark Making with Nature: Surface Design with Natural Dyes 4 Part Series
Over 2 hours of Digital Video Instruction

Everything you ever wanted to know to create unique cloth using natural dyes is covered in this Digital Video Series, an excellent companion to the book Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Techniques.

Topics Covered Include:
•Bundle Dyeing: Several methods of bundle and compost dyeing are demonstrated.
•Screen Printing with natural dyes, using thickeners and more.
•Bound Resists with natural dyes how to obtain rich layers of color on fabric. Mono-printing & Stamping with natural dyes.
•Create additional depth and design to your fabrics by stamping and printing them using natural dyes and pigments.
•Dye Painting with natural dyes using thickeners, gutta resists, and much much more. Pigments: using pigments with natural dyes to create additional character to your art cloth.

Mark Making with Nature eBook Set MEGA SALE!!!

Black Friday thru Cyber Monday MEGA Sale

Mark Making with Nature  

Titles Include:

• Mark Making with Nature
• Rust and Clay Dyeing
• Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentation Dyeing Techniques
• Getting Started with Natural Dyeing 

That 's 172 pages of how-to dye, paint, and print with natural dyes for $3.95!  Own them today!

Preparing for Dinner in my Studio

A couple of years ago I moved my studio out of what was once upon a time a master bedroom in our house and into the living and dining rooms.  Hubs was tired of my being holed up in my studio 8-12 hours a day and never seeing me.  Now he sees me all of the time.

Dilemma.  We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, but we no longer have a dining room.  So enters in brilliant and creative idea to host a dinner party in my studio.  I find the idea both exciting and terrifying at the same time.  Tomorrow we will move our old dining room table, a Duncan Phyfe that seats 16, from it's hiding place in my sewing studio and put it back into the dining room where my drafting table currently resides.

The wonderful part is we are doing more purging and deep cleaning so the house is looking better every single day.

Angel got a bath today, she had me worried for awhile as she was shivering and like crazy afterwards but that all stopped after she ate some warm hamburger.   We will be taking her to the vet, hopefully tomorrow, to see what needs to be done next, I'm not ready to send her over the bridge yet, but, she's lost a dreadful amount of weight and which has me really worried.  She made it to 15 which I hear is quite the accomplishment for a Sheltie.

More Pear Therapy

Red Pear No. 1

This year there have been plenty of red pears available at the local grocery stores. Today's simple painting is of a red pear, or I should say the memory of the red pear I ate.

Red Pear No. 2 Detail 2 from my pear stencil series.

Things Happen!

Things happen. A few weeks back I blogged that I was cancelling my Vimeo account and taking my videos elsewhere.  Well that didn't happen because I was unable to figure out how to cancel my account, before it auto renewed and to make matters worse it auto renewed two days before the expiration date, which created a TON of headaches on my end.

So, I have lowered the price of my video series, and will leave it at this price until the end of November at which time I plan to take it out of circulation and will replace it with a new video series.

Mark Making with Nature 

Surface Design with Natural Dyes Series 

RENT $9.95 or BUY $34.95 it today!!!  

http://vimeo.com/ondemand/9277 

Soup!

Portuguese Kale Soup!!!  Right now everything feels soupy, from this unusually early cold spell to the upheaval in my sewing room.  Late last week the ceiling in my sewing room start snap, crackle, and popping so I started moving stuff out for the soon to happen tear down of the ceiling.  Hopefully it won't decide to come down on it's own between now and Sunday when hubs vacation starts.

Finding Inspiration

Dried Phlox from my garden.

More Stencils

I've been making some simple geometric designs in Photoshop and then importing them over to Silhouette Studio where I convert them into a simple outline from which the stencil is cut.  On this sheet of stencil film I'm cutting chevrons for a repeat pattern, hexies, and polka dots, 6x6 inches.

Next up some considerably more intricate designs from my original art.  Cutting the simpler geometric designs allowed me to see how fine of a line the machine would cut and the design would still be legible.