Studio Purge Part One

Over the next few days I will be posting not only images of my studio spaces, for accountability purposes, but also to let you know what is available.  I will be selling some items check out the studio purge tab for daily updates, and others will go to new homes for the sole cost of shipping!

In thinking about my "brand" I've had to make a decision as to which mediums and colors I will be working with and "why"!  This wall here contains beads, findings, and all sorts of mixed media objects that is and should be heaven for most artists.  Well this was true until today when I got into the last fight I ever want to have with myself over studio space EVER again!

Yes that is right, you know every time you scream in frustration because you can no longer move in your studio space, or find that book you need to finish a project at the last hour, you are fighting with yourself!

Stop fighting with yourself!

More beads, jars of silk cocoons, buttons, bells, baubles, and all sorts of nummies.  The crates above are filled with mixed media papers, findings, Angelina fibers, pine cones, silk carrier rods, and who knows what else.  Well I'm planning to start excavating tomorrow so we will soon find out what else lies within those crates.

Far shelf, more beads, findings, jars with little bells in them... you get the picture.  Foreground that's supposed to be my sewing table and right now it's loaded with drawing and painting supplies.

The other side of my sewing table.  The plastic drawer stuff (to the south of the table) are filled with vintage, antique, and somewhat modern laces, threads, buttons, ric rac, you name it, oh and a ton of handspun yarns from fibers I carded and dyed myself and in some cases even acquired from local sheep I used to sheer.

The wall of thread!  And those little plastic drawer organizers, if you guessed filled with beads you'd be correct.  And they are also over flowing with embroidery floss, pearl cottons, and the like.

More thread, and those plastic tubs are filled with... if you guessed vintage and antique trims you'd be correct! Two of the tubs are also filled with natural dyed wool, silk, and cotton fabrics.  All of those baskets and tubs on top are filled with more fibers, more threads, and more mixed media objects, seeing a theme here  yet???

And sweeping past the entrance to my sewing room... More threads under the clock.

More fabric, more threads, more fibers, and no place to put finished artwork!  This is the north wall in my sewing studio and I want ALL of this stuff to go bye bye, with the exception of the shelf (you see the side of it here) with the clock.  My goal is to put my drawing table and new flat file cabinet (that hubs is building for me) on this wall.

Finally the corner where I started, the NW corner of my studio.  Again more fibers, more threads, more fabric, all dyed with natural dyes.  Oh and a ton of knitting supplies and latruador that I'm never going to get to in this life time.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow the area of my studio known as the "overflow" area.

Snow

Doing what I Love

And ONLY what I love!!!  I'm going back to my stitched stories, I have a ton of them sitting around here so I'm setting some of them free to new homes via my Big Cartel Shop!  The remainign 28 pieces have a solo show date this spring, and hopefully by then I'll have finished another 28 pieces.

Pattern

Pattern and Inspiration often come from the unlikeliest of places in this case it's old vines attached to the wooden siding on my house.

I've been using this vine inspiration in my work for about thirteen years now, lines and french knots is what it has inspired.

Fledgling A Stitched Story Textile Painting

Finished this piece this evening, am finally happy with the final look.  It's very rough and organic just like the fledgling in my sketch.

Available in my shop.

New Paints

Some new paints, I'm in love with Pam Carriker's new fluid matte paints and plan to purchase more colors!

As you can see here there's a considerable difference in the amount of paint and for the same price point!

My new half pan watercolor palette.

And here it is filled with watercolor paint!

WIP - Documented Life Journal Cover

My journal cover is a work in progress, I just got my journal yesterday and we are now at the beginning of week 2, you can learn more about The Documented Life Challenge here.  Note that this is NOT my challenge it is being hosted by others, I decided I wanted to try the challenge and my focus for this year long odyssey will be my health.

Birds

Thanks to the 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge I'm back to drawing birds, and right now I'm in an art bird frame of mind!  Here is my half duck half water bird I'm working on this afternoon.

Tonight's activities include clearing my drawing and drafting tables so that I can start working on my crow panels once again.  It's snowing here today so it seems like the perfect day to focus exclusively on my studio.

I have a solo show coming up this spring and I have yet to decide what I will put in the show, this is code for I haven't started yet and I haven't a clue!  It'll be fiber art of some sort, 2D for the most part, and may involve more crows, and corn of course, and maybe some Queen Anne's lace???

Deep Winter Sale!!!

 

Am Celebrating the deep dark days of Winter this year by having a storewide sale... hop on over to my Big Cartel Shop and check it out!  Use the code "Hibernation" when checking out! 

Day 2 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge

Day 2 Story

Resting in arborvitae beside my house

Your song brings to the trees to life.

Is your song ushering in the coming storm?

Or are you singing a song of joy?

A tasty morsel to share,

No creature dares to leave the protection of the tree.

Branches shivering, the Sun twinkling, and the sky a brilliant blue,

Deceptive beauty as nature braces for a fatal blow.

The wind smells of snow.

Going back to Day 2, I had a head start by a couple of days because well I'm writing the prompts, etc., so noticed that I had made a couple of attempts at either a poem or story in my journal.  

I think the sketch pretty much sums it up, it's frigid out right now, the birds are all huddled in the neighbors arborvitaes, I know they are roosting in the tree because you can hear them chirping away if one listens closely enough.  I suspect that they are egging one another one (pun intended) to leave the tree for food and water and no one wants to give up their warm spot on the branch.

Day 1 of the 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge!

See the red circle in the lower left hand corner?  It's highlighting an old enamel dish pan filled with organic corn for the birds and the fat squirrel that's made it's home in our attic, I named the squirrel Trouble.

Since it's mid afternoon as I post this there are no birds out and about, I expect to be seeing some closer to evening time.  For now they are holed up in those arborvitae's to the north of our dog run, I could hear a few peeps over the sound of the traffic.

I'm still working on my poem for Day 1 and will post later this evening, other activities are pressing at the moment, like the making of black-eyed peas with greens for our New Years Dinner.  At the moment hubs is grinding organic corn for the corn bread he'll make to go with our meal.

New Journals

Finished assembling the remaining two journals for the 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge this evening, now to fill them up with all sorts of wondrous sketches, words, poems, songs, found imagery, etc!

Parting Shot

2004-2014

We adopted her in 2004, the vet estiimated her age then to be 5-7.5 years then, love you Lulu Belle!!!

60 Bird Journal Challenge Begins in Six Days!!!

Join me in 2015 for the 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge!!!

Each day for 60 days you will receive a newsletter emailed to you from me that details an Observation, an Activity and finally a Challenge!  There will be plenty of opportunities to write, sketch, paint, and even sing during this challenge!  

To join the challenge subscribe to my newsletter that I've created specifically for this challenge, the only way to receive the prompts is by subscribing to the newsletter.

60 Bird Challenge Journal No. 1

The cover is a reclaimed manila envelope I monoprinted.

I filled with a variety of toned artist drawing papers, composition papers, mixed media paper, and the like.

Some more toned artists papers, Canson and Stratford, I also added a healthy dose of old maps, scrapbooking papers, to add additional variety.

Getting Gelly Pens to Write Again!!!

Ok after trying a multitude of fixes available on the internet I finally found one that got my pens working again.

If you have gelly pens, and the Glaze Pens seem to be the worse, and they have quite writing and you can see that the ink is still viable in the pens try this.

Leaving the caps securely attached to the tips of the pens, and I highly recommend wearing goggles here when you do this,

Trying NOT to split the pen cap, take the pens and tap REALLY HARD about a half dozen times straight up and down onto a very hard very sturdy surface like a counter top.  You want to tap the pen tip end down onto the surface.

THEN once you are done doing this with the pen tip down, and the cap still firmly covering the tip of the pen, whap the hell out of the pen onto the hard surface, yes this would be teh writing end of the pen.

And when I say whap the hell out of the pen I ""really''"' mean whap the hell out of it, and yes my rotor cuff is screaming at me right now, however, I now have 38 out of 39 gelly pens writing and quite beautifully I might add, once again!!!

Dried Gelly Pens and Journal Pages

My gelly pens seem to have dried out somehow, there's still ink in the pens but the pens won't write. I've tried the water method to get the pens to work again but it didn't work.  If anyone has any tried and true techniques for making the gelly pens write again please let me know!

Still cutting papers for the soon to be created 60 Day Bird Challenge Journals.

Today I went through my scrap booking papers and discovered some really beautiful papters in my stash.  Those have now been cut down to size, 6x9 inches (and this is a 3+ inch stack of various papers!), and are ready to be incorporated into new journals.

Projects

A pear and a pomegranate still life.

There's been a lot of drama in my life recently, surrounding Angel (and her impending crossing of the bridge) and an issue a neighbor has with Oliver, to the point that I've become completely blocked.

So today I started mindlessly drawing pears again, and after a few hours I became unblocked and started working on The 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge again.  A few more hours in and I'm feeling much better now.

This evening I started refining the journal prompts and began constructing the journals I will be using during the challenge period.

A sneak peak of the papers to be used in the soon to be revealed journals.

60 Day Bird Challenge 2015

Join me in 2015 for 

The 60 Day Bird Challenge!!!

January 1st to March 1st, 2015

To participate sign up for my special newsletter created for this challenge alone.  You will receive one email prompt daily for each day of the Challenge.

There is also a facebook group for those participating in the challenge and for those wanting to encourage those of us in the challenge.  In order to receive the daily prompts you MUST subscribe to the newsletter as I will not be posting these on the blog or in the group. 

Each day you will be encouraged to paint, draw/stitch, or write something about Birds. 

Queen Anne's Lace: Faded Memories

I'm not sure if I'm finished with this piece or now, notice the tattered edge on the right side?  I'm not exactly happy with it at the moment and am thinking of some additional layering.

If you look close enough  you will see that there is additional stitching beneath the hot pink silk organza net, first layer is a silk damask type fabric I dyed with cochineal and then machine stitched to a layer of timtex.

I stitched a grid of sorts and some Queen Anne's Lace onto the first layer using a variegated pink rayon thread.

The initial audition.  The piece to the left consists of cochineal dyed silk organza atop a layer of indigo dyed silk damask fabric which may or may not be finished tonight.

Two Red Pears

Two fresh red pears 

I asked for three but it's the end of the fresh pear season here so I'm doing good to have gotten two!

These are not as red as the Barletts I had earlier in the season, these are rudier and are more in keeping with Pantones color for 2015 "Marsala".  I also am quite enamored with the greenish blush on the large pear and the stripes on the smaller pear.

Since I have only two pears my original idea is well, will no longer work.  So I'm playing with these to see how I want to use them in my work.  Next up some thumbnail sketches and I think I will slice one open it could get interesting!

A Pearish Experiment

A thread painting on painted timtex with Aurifil threads.

Playing with an idea for a new series.

More later... from my studio, it shall be fun to see where this piece goes.

StencilGirl Products CYBER MONDAY SALE!!!

Stencil Girl Products

CYBER MONDAY STENCIL SALE!!!

Today Only

Here is an opportunity to Own My Stencils for a Great Price!!! 

Black Birds in Tree Stencil