Chaos.

Happy April! Look who I found peeking out of the dead Autumn leaves? Of course the next day it snowed...


March was officially dubbed "The Month of Chaos".  I was all over the place... not a whole lot of focus going on.  I did complete my hand painted fabric for the fabric swatch exchange over at Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine.  I intended to document the process. But guess what? Yeah, I got so into it, I forgot to take photos between all the steps.  Doh! Well, I can retell what I did do...

Started out with plain raw canvas. I needed to get 9 - 9" squares so this was about 28" x 28". I smooshed water into it, then slapped on some paint. I used Stewart Gill Colourise paint in Yellow with just a few dabs of Orange. I watered down the paint right on the canvas to give it a mottled look.

Next, I mixed a mister bottle with some watered down Green paint and used real Gingko leaves as a mask. Sprayed the green paint around the canvas, being sure to have some splotchy drips in places.


After this was dry, I decided I hated it. I guess I was first thinking about a nature theme, but... Nah. It just didn't work out. So I decided to cover most of it up and go abstract. Here is where I forgot to take the pictures after each layer! I'll try to describe the layers for you.

First I used a home made stamp and stamped orange bubbles all over the place with  Stewart Gill Byzantia in Excelsius. Better. I then mixed up some Colourise Bottle with water and sprayed through an alphabet stencil. Much better. It needed some contrast so I took three different sizes of cardboard tubes and started stamping some black circles. And then used some Metamica paints to add some metallic sheen to the fabric with the same circle stamps. This picture does NOT do it justice. It has a nice shimmer when looking at it against the light. After I cut it in 9" squares each piece looked like this:

I really like it. I hope the swappers do too!

In other areas of the studio... I was trying to figure out what else I can do with the silk fibers I sell over at the shop.  (Oh, I'm making "examples", I swear! I am NOT using up my stock!!) Well, I love the blue haired look and decided to make a little Goddess doll.

I drew her face on a piece of muslin and sewed it onto some hand dyed fabric. I used blue silk fiber mix for her long flowing hair and sewed some beads on her torso. I should have made her smiling. If I had really long blue silk hair I'd be smiling for sure. 


I've also been hearing about "Dotee Dolls" lately. They are smaller than my Goddess and simpler in shape. At least mine is. I had this awesome wool left over from a wristwarmer project and it reminded me of dreadlocks. So I gave my Dotee doll the Rastafarian look. 

I stuck a magnet to the back of her head so I could hang her up on my lunchbox which is hanging on  my pegboard. I am rapidly running out of horizontal display space in the studio!


Hmm. What else? I won a blog giveaway at Liz Kettle's blog! I won her gorgeous new book called "Threads: The Basics and Beyond" Seriously. Who knew all the totally cool things you could do with thread? I'm taking a free book study with her and co-author Debbie Bates... for both this book and their "Fabric Embellishment: The Basics and Beyond". So many cool things to do... I need a few more hours in the day!

And to add a little more sweetness to the giveaway, Interweave Press threw in a prize package as well. A few days later I got this: 

The fabric consists of a bundled roll of 48 different coordinating patterns in pretty big squares. (I want to say 10" or 12" squares?) I just separated them a bit here but there are 48! and they all match! How cool is that. Also included was some beautiful specialty threads to play with. Almost too pretty to use. Almost. Thanks Interweave!


I have TONS more to show you, but I'm going to keep them for other days. A friend of mine from a yahoo group dared (encouraged?) me to share something personal (and hard to share) so I will share some journaling pages I did for the Sketchbook Challenge blog. Tomorrow. Maybe.