Ice Dyeing...

Recently I have become a fan of the mottled look of ice dyed cloth so I wanted to try it. Dharma Trading Co (where I got my procion dyes) has a tutorial HERE.

So last weekend when I was visiting my friend Leslie we did some ice dyeing.

It amazed me that even when it was 103 degrees outside the ice lingered.

A very bright t-shirt (still electric after washing).
Interesting note: the white you see are the threads which obviously were not cotton. Procion dyes do not dye synthetics.

 A piece of fabric also very bright. Perfect for a burst of color on a quilt piece! Thanks Leslie for holding it up!

And the blue-greenish ones I took out early and rinsed out to get some more or less pastels. Will be great as blendables on a quilt piece!

All in all the ice dyeing was so much fun I want to do it again! I think I will do it in a smaller scale though, maybe a small tub at a time since I do not have a lot of work room outside. I could use some blues into turquoise ranges next.

All of this was on plain old cheap muslin. I like the more coarseness of the fabric and the occasional bits of brown or other nubs in it. Plus it is so much cheaper than something like a Kona white PFD (prepared for dyeing). But I also have some of that so I will be trying it in the coming weeks as well.

Post Cards...

Another thing I finally did was get to the post office and found some new mail art in my box. So last weekend I visited my arty friend Leslie and while she did numerous amazing arty things, I got these mail art cards done and ready to go.

The backgrounds were already done and in my pile of "do something with these!" so I added dots and more dots and lines and a couple of quotes from this large print book Leslie had. I need to get over to my library sale book room and find a large print novel like this for cutting out totally random phrases!

I still have a large pile of finished backgrounds to play with. Maybe now that this 6 week long cold and cough is GONE I will be able to find that arty mojo that seems to have taken a hike and get more done!

Post card art

Last Sunday I went to my friend Leslie's house again and we made some post card art! I had seen THIS page from Create Media (look at photo 2) and wanted to do that technique. Luckily Leslie has a lot of great art playing room in her studio!

We grabbed all our gelli prints and started cutting and gluing and came up with some fun post cards! Here is one I finished.

I have a few more partly done that I will finish soon and then send off to some of my waiting mail art friends! It was fun doing some art again -- it had been ages!

An arty weekend...

Well weekend of sorts -- it was really Sunday and Monday. I went down to visit my friend Leslie who has those 2 days as her weekend and we did lots of artsy craftsy projects.

We played with sari ribbons, covered bangles, and made bracelets...

We did some gelli printing...

We worked on art projects, she made a small book and I worked on postcards... nothing special to show on those yet.

And... she taught me to crochet... again! She had already attempted teaching me before but apparently it did not stick. I needed a repeat lesson and more practice. So we started again and this time I think I have it... at least I can continue on my own now...

Paint Chip Postcards...

Last Sunday I went down to Leslie's house for an art play day and we made paint chip postcards for the current MMSA swap. You can see hers HERE.

At first I tried to make a scene with the paint chips and it came out ok but I am not usually so patient and this one took a bit longer than I thought it would.

So for the next 2 I used one of my garish orange and purple background post cards and did some geometric pattern stuff on them.

I really like how these came out actually.

One of these days I will scan or photograph some of the Mail Art I have been getting from these swaps and other mail art trades.


Linked to:
Creative Every Day

Getting back to art and garden goodies...

Yesterday I finally got off my butt and cruised down to Tracy (in my new car which I am loving -- love the hybrid, how quiet it is!). Had another play day with my friend Leslie.

As she explains in her blog we chatted and goofed off a lot, then finally buckled down and made some ATCs. I have not made Artist Trading Cards for oh maybe 18 or 20 years so it was fun getting back to doing some! Leslie told me about the MMSA (Mail Me Some Art) swaps and that has totally captured my attention now! The theme is Postal Art. Here are the five I made:

Then today Andy and I did some fruit picking. Here is the last of the apricot harvest (so few pieces of fruit this year but they have spectacular flavor to make up for it!):

And the first of the figs. Remember that fake owl we put out HERE? Well... apparently the birds are too smart for it! They had already started chowing down on the ripe figs so we brought in a huge batch. Probably have one or two more hauls to bring in this next few days and next week. I have NO idea what to do with so many figs! This is the first year we have managed to get any from the birds!

Linked to:

Mandarin Orange Monday

Paste Papers...

On Sunday I met up with my friend Leslie and we went to Maria's in Fremont for an art play day. This time we got messy making paste papers and we had a blast! Leslie has already posted about it HERE and posted a ton of photos from our day but of course I have more photos to show as well!

We got to play in this wonderful studio space (thank you Maria!) with lots of room to spread out and make the mess we wanted to make...

With lots of room for our papers to dry...

And yes there was a slight breeze so sometimes we had to chase after our papers!

And finally we laid them all out to see what we had done -- TONS of papers made and equally as many laughs!We used art paste, acrylic paints, stencils, marking tools like combs and other things to make textures, and anything we could think of!

And these are most of the ones I did. I had a couple more still outside drying and a few experiments in my journal as well.

Fun art day and cleaning my art area (again)...

Yes I know, I am always having to clean up my little space but yesterday when I was at Leslie's for our fun art play day I saw how she had rearranged her space and it made me want to do some more rearranging on mine!

So we made some more Roben-Marie style pages! It always amazed me that even though I do the same basic thing to follow her page style, they can come out so varied. This was last time. This time I tried some different color combinations. Which do you like better?

It is a many many layered thing. Starts out with some stencils, then gelli plate colors, then collage, doodling, more color, more doodling, more collage, you get the idea!

So today I came across a couple more of my newsprint pad pages that I put my work on so I thought I would share them here. Remnants of gelli print brayer clean off, spray inks, general left over colors, etc. Feel free to download either of the following and use as you would like in your art work. As usual I would love credit back to me and it would be great if you linked to what you made with these freebies!

Linked to:
Mandarin Orange Monday
Colorful Gelli Party
Create Every Day
Blue Monday

Another Mandarin Orange Monday...

Not at all sure what these will grow into but the last few days I have been adding blotches of orange, gray, white or black to these and just playing with the colors. For all I know they may get mostly all covered up eventually but for now, they are blotches of orange which pleases me.

And here are some cut up gelli printed labels my friend Leslie and I did on Sunday with my new Silhouette Cameo machine. I need to stop playing long enough to write more of a post about that thing, but it is so much fun I just can't stop using it to blog about it!

This is a gelli printed label page (using some of the new stencils I have been making):

And another art journal background page, this time for my new larger 9"x12" journal:

Here are 4 of the bunch of stamps we cut, actual size around 2" x 1.5", made from a stencil of postage stamp designs I made with my new Silhouette Cameo. Cut out of gelli printed label paper:

Linked to Mandarin Orange Monday and Carolyn Dube's Gelli Print Party

Art Intentions for 2013...

It feels like a year of new beginnings and a lot of finishing...

Some of my art goals intentions for the New Year are:
1. Do art daily! Even if it is 10 minutes of making a background in my journal. Just do it!
2. Do a monthly art journal calendar to keep track of what I do for my daily art time.
3. Work on my  Ticket to Venice journal.
4. Finish my ROD (Remains of the Day) Journal.
4. Paint on a canvas (board) .
5. Make more books!
6. Work on the Craftsy classes I signed up for.
7. Find my art style... an ongoing search.
8. Go to Art Unraveled in Phoenix in July.
9. Do more art quilting.
10. Make my taupe quilt.
11. Do more embroidery.
12. Finish the scarf I am knitting!
13. Redesign my blog title with photos behind the title so it always looks the same on all browsers.

I also wanted to mention that the other day a few of us who are local but taking Mary Ann Moss' Ticket to Venice online class met up in Fremont at the studio of one of the participants. We spent the day gabbing, playing, looking at each other's art, and getting motivated to work on our journals for the class. I had SO MUCH FUN!! It really rejuvenated my spirit for doing ART and making it a priority in my life. I was so busy looking at stuff that I actually forgot to take pictures of the day but I am sure it won't be the last time we all meet and play!

A day of dyeing and having fun...

Spent the day dyeing fabrics and trying out a few new things today.

This is my favorite bleach discharge on black kona fabric. 

My friend Beverly tried a stencil as a bleach discharge and I love the result! I will have to do some of those next time too!

And we tried various sun-print type methods with Seta Dyes. Wrapped fabrics:

to make these: 

and while I was wrapping, Beverly was making leaf prints: 

I thought I was taking lots of photos but I didn't end up with all that many. I will photograph a few more results and show them another time. And next time I will attempt a better documentation process! But it was sure fun!