Bowls and cards

 Good grief, October is almost gone already!  Time really flies these days...

It's been a month of making bowls, moving my booth in Sedona Artist Market, and preserving autumn leaves along with using some.

Here's my "show and tell":

Here's my first attempt at a bowl with a braided rim - definitely something I hope to do more of!

Haven't done a bowl with a lid for awhile, and this one just seemed to be a good one for a lid - slightly different shape than my usual ones.

And it's been awhile since I made a ribbon bowl!

I picked up this fabric on a day trip to Phoenix last week - love the warm, autumn colors!

I have been collecting leaves to preserve for some of my cards, and made a few nice ones while I was learning about methods that worked best for preserving the leaves.  Here are a few:

I pressed the leaves in a book covered by other books to preserve them, then lightly sponged on some metallic paints before gluing them to a botanical print card.  I'm glad I finally took the time to try this - I love autumn leaves, and love that I can incorporate them into my creative pursuits!

My lovely new booth at Sedona Artist Market!  Much larger than my old one, and I got a larger clothing rack so I could expand my inventory.  Can't wait to see how my sales went this month!

On the home front, I got our heater vents cleaned out, got some work done in the yard, and did a little ice dyeing:

Time to start thinking about what to do in November - hard to believe Christmas is just around

the corner!  Stay tuned....

Welcome to Autumn!

I love all the seasons, but have a special place in my heart for Autumn.  Some of my favorite early memories are of me helping my mom decorate for Halloween, and loving the autumn leaves as they turned glorious yellows, oranges and reds before falling from the trees.  Over the years, autumn leaves have been a recurring theme in my work, and this year is no different.  recently, I custom dyed an Autumn Leaves batik shirt for a dear friend:

And as I have done in past years, I decorated a couple of my coiled fabric bowls with fabric autumn leaves:

I actually made up a number of leaves before making the bowl and lid above, so I have lots left over for other projects!

Several years ago, I did a couple of Autumn Leaves batik art quilts, and still have one hanging in my office:

I made a few coiled bowls that I plastered and painted, with Autumn leaves themes:

And a few years back, I made some framed Autumn Leaves pieces:

Now I'm looking at ideas on pinterest for other ways to use autumn leaves in my work... obsessed?  Maybe!  But they have been a strong influence on my work for many years now, and will probably continue to crop up in my art.  Can't beat Nature for inspiration!

July in review

July just flew by in a flurry of dyes, fabric and wax!  Continuing to experiment with ice dyeing, I decided to try swirls to see how they would come out.  Here are a few examples:

Brazil Nut

Sage Green

Sage Green

I'm working to build up my stock in colors that guys as well as gals would like, thus the softer more subtle look.

As promised in my last post, I have begun to build up my stock of Autumn Leaves shirts, as well as adding the pattern and colors to my Waterfall Jacket collection:

Autumn Leaves Batik with Brazil nut background

Autumn Leaves batik with Moss Green background

I plan to have a large selection of these ready for our 19th Annual Flagstaff Open Studios tour August 27 & 28

Our Prelude Exhibit Opening Reception was held at the Artists' Coalition Gallery again this year, and we had a great turn-out!

With my friend Cinde at the Opening Reception

Full house at the Opening Reception

My Vase with Flowers sold that night!

So here we are in August, and I am working to prepare for Open Studios, followed immediately by a return of my booth to the Gallery in September, then Autumn Leaves and Holly show at the end of October.  Never a dull moment, but I'm having a wonderful time!

More Ice Dyeing, a Vase of Flowers and Autumn Leaves

Continuing my ice dyeing experiments, I have tried several more colors which netted mostly good or great results:

Lavender Avocado Mandala

Brazil Nut stripe

Mermaid's Dream stripe

Lapis Diagonal Stripe

Plum Soft Orange Diagonal Stripe

I am now a firm convert to Ice Dyeing, thanks to Lynda Heines' class, and will be doing more as time permits.

Meanwhile, I have been working on a piece to show in this year's Prelude Exhibit at the Artists' Coalition Gallery.  I call it Vase of Flowers:

This started out to be just the vase, but when I finished it, I decided it needed something else.  I looked at dried floral arrangements, but didn't think they would be what I wanted.  Then I came across some instructions on how to make fabric flowers using floral wire as the base, and set about to make some.  This took a little while, since I had other things I was working on and each petal had to be glued to the wire and left to dry.  I finally finished enough, and decided it was ready to go.  This will be on display in the gallery for the month of August.

And in preparation for the Open Studios Tour, I now need to start cranking out my Autumn Leaves batik shirts, which are always a popular item for the show.  Shown below is one from a previous year:

I think I am going to experiment with Brazil nut mixed, for a background color.  Then it will be time to fire up the wax pot and start dyeing!

Getting ready for Open Studios Tour

Hard to believe that the Flagstaff Open Studios Tour is less than three weeks away!  It always seems so far off, then I wake up one morning, look at the calendar and go... OMG!  Time to ramp up production and crank out more product!
Every year, we have the Prelude Exhibit for the entire month of August, which allows the Open Studios artists to display samples of their work to the community, to help them decide which artists' studios to visit.  This year, we are holding the exhibit in a beautiful store in the Flagstaff Mall:

We had over 500 in attendance at the Opening Reception Saturday, and I sold both of my pieces... a good omen for the Tour!

Meanwhile, the Bowl Werks is up and running: 

                         

   And the Autumn Leaves shirt factory is up and running:

Time to head back to the studio... time's a wasting!  Stay tuned...

Finishing out the year

My show season ended last weekend with the Mountain Campus Holiday Show,

 and I am busy working to finish up some custom orders:

This is a variation on my Autumn Leaves batik, but the buyer wanted greens instead of the traditional autumn colors.  I think I will need to make more of these!

This is an experiment I did on a Habotai silk scarf with an allover leaf pattern.  I won't go into all the complexities of the process I used, but it is the first batik I have successfully achieved on silk.

Next on my list is an order to dye 20 shirts for a local artist who will be screen printing an original design on them, then selling to a shop in nearby Williams... can't wait to see how they turn out!  

And I am hoping to sell some of my work to Flagstaff General Store, a new store that opened on Friday. 

I have lots of half-formed ideas stewing in my brain that I hope to hatch in the coming months... another winter of tinkering, imagining, experimenting... I love these months between shows when I get to play!  Then before I know it, another season will start and I'll be off and running again.  I hope to do a little better job of posting here... lately it has just been too hectic to even think!  So bear with me as I take a breath, stare off into space for a few moments, then get back on track!

Autumn Leaves...

I have been hard at work the past couple of weeks, feverishly creating new things for my next show, "Autumn Leaves & Holly" at the Woodlands Hotel here in Flagstaff:

This is the time of year that I try to make up "Autumn Leaves" shirts using soy wax to batik leaves in a garland around the neck and down the sleeves... a very popular item with my customers.  This year, I haven't had too much time, but hope to have at least a small selection for this show.  Here is one of the finished shirts:

I used a mixture of browns to overdye the body of the shirt after waxing the leaves... came out really rich and dark, making the leaves glow with color.  

I'm also working on building up my "Shabby Chic" scarf collection for the show.  These sold really well at our local Artists' Coalition Gallery this summer, so I've been working overtime to replenish my stock!  Here are a few I made recently that will be available at the show:

  

 I still have lots to do to prepare for the show, then I have 2 more shows coming up in November... stay tuned!

Autumn Leaves batik - final dyeing

After I took the picture I posted yesterday, I left the piece to batch overnight.  Early this morning, I decided I wanted to add some more layers of color to the background to add to the visual interest, so before I laundered the piece, I used a sea sponge and added some Palomino Gold, Copper (my mixture), and a little more Dark Brown.  Then I batched for several more hours before I rinsed and laundered the piece.  Here it is now:

The piece was still wet yesterday when I took the picture I posted then, so it appeared that the background around the leaves was darker.  Once it dried, it became lighter.  Today, after adding the additional colors, I see a little shading and more of a variegated background, which I like much better.  So now, I think I'll keep it up on the design board for a little while to decide what I will do next: finish as an Art Quilt?  Stretch, mount and frame?  I have finished similar pieces using traditional quilted and free-motion stitched methods, but I think studying it for awhile will help me to see where it takes me.  One thing I'm glad of is that I tried using batik to block out the leaves before dyeing the background.  It's nice to have a more muted background than I get if I pre-dye the piece with the autumn leaf colors, then cover the leaves, then overdye the background.  I'll post more when I have taken the next step on this piece.      

Dye painting the Autumn Leaves

Today, I painted dye on the leaves of the piece I posted about yesterday.  I was going to use thickener to restrict the flow of the dye, but decided against it.  I really wanted a watercolor effect, and that requires the dyes to flow freely.  So they did flow into the background some, but I'm not worried about that.  All the colors I used are lighter than the background, so they should not create a problem.  Here is how it looks now, with the dyes still wet:

I used a couple of small artist's straight-edge brushes and applied first the lemon yellow, then golden yellow, soft orange and scarlet to the leaves in a random fashion.  I got a lot of nice crackling from the wax that created good visual interest on the leaves.  After the dyes have 'batched', I will wash the piece out.  Then I may wax over the leaves and add some more browns to the background to enhance it.  I'll post again when I have more progress to report.

Autumn Leaves batik... the next step

After I posted the picture yesterday of the leaves I traced on fabric, I coated them with melted soy wax to act as a resist to the dye I then applied to the background.  Here's how it looked after I applied the dye:

So the next step was to be painting the leaves with thickened dyes, which I began a little while ago.  Oops!  I goofed!  I'm doing this in a different sequence than normal - I usually pre-dye the item before tracing the leaves on, then wax, then overdye.  For some reason, reversing the process made me forget I need to pre-soak the fabric in a soda ash solution and allow to dry before I add the dyes to the leaves.  Sigh... guess it will sit overnight, then I can wash out the small amount of dye I already applied, soak, dry and start over.  Good thing I didn't have anything planned for tomorrow!

On another note, I ordered a new product today called Batik-EZ by Crafter's Pick.  Can't find it locally, so I found an on-line source.  It is supposed to be another way to resist dyes and paints without having to deal with melting and applying wax.  I'll let you know how it works when I have a chance to give it a try!