March 25, 2014 – Awake, Thou Wintry Earth….

Awake, thou wintry earth –
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, “An Easter Hymn”
 
 

March 25 dusting of snow

We had a slight dusting of snow last night….winter is trying it’s best to stay. Poo.

March 3, 2014

Hello, March…ice, sleet and snow….DSC05415‘Nuff said.

Postcard Panache

Saturday afternoon Jan. 25th was the second class of Postcard Panache. These ladies couldn’t make the first class, so I scheduled another one. There were supposed to be a couple more gals but something came up and got in their way! Here are Mary Ann and Bonnie learning some things about Angelina fibers.

Mary Ann and Bonnie in Class (800x600)

Next class: Saturday, March 8, I will be teaching a fiber photo collage class. Students will learn a bit about collage-making with fibers, photo transfer, and hand stitching. Class sample…

Fiber Photo Collage Class

This Weather!

Big flakes on February 4…this is the view out my back door….

DSC05388

Making Patterns

Some time back I spent  time playing with making patterns using Photoshop Elements. I used images of cloth I made and images of Citrasolve papers. These papers are a never ending source of collage papers. Here are a couple of those patterns made from Citrasolve papers. Enjoy.

paperrepeat1

paperrepeat2 copy

August This N’ That

Summer is winding down…it’s August already.   It has gone by quickly.

Along with leaving town a couple of times, working to have items ready for the artisans/farmer’s market each weekend, and now produce coming in from the garden, a girl has to work hard at getting quality time making art.  I have an exhibit to hang in October…!

I have been working on some new work and last week saw me spending a lot of time just doing art.  “Composition” is a new series I am working on.  It is mixed media work and I am enjoying it immensely.  I am having loads of fun using paint, ink and pastels to create on paper and cloth.

Composition - collaged base of paper and cloth, gesso, acrylic paint, oil pastels, ink paper

There are more coming in this series and manner of working.  These measure approximately 15″ square.  Work is also proceeding on a larger piece using discharged black cotton sateen and a rust dyed cotton feed sack.

Scarlet and I have started working on Christmas ornaments for the gallery gift shop.  Mine will mostly be mixed media and made of papers.  They are started but there is much to be done before they are ready for display.

New journal covers I have been creating this summer are photos printed on cotton. Oh, look…one of them is the new artwork, Composition.

I have a couple of shows I will be working in September.  See my events tab (above) to see where I will be.  October will be the time I am finishing up everything for my exhibit in New Harmony, IN.

Well, I guess it’s time to get back to my other work now….

More “Stories”

Two more collages finished today.

Stories of New Harmony #8

Stories of New Harmony #9

New Series in Paper

Last week I was working on getting some things ready to sell.  I often do events in New Harmony, IN  and have a lot of photographs from that historic tourist town.  I decided to start a series of collages from photographs that might be appealing to visitors to the area.

Stories of New Harmony:  Brick, log cabins mixed with modernity.

Stories of New Harmony #1

Stories of New Harmony #2

Stories of New Harmony #3

Stories of New Harmony #4

Stories of New Harmony #5

Stories of New Harmony #6

Stories of New Harmony #7

Restful Sunday

Shadows

 

Thermofax Screens

I had a commenter ask about where to get Thermofax screens made, so I decided to just do a post about it.

Thermofax screens are awesome to use if you don’t want to mess with the photo emusion process on silkscreens.  They are great to use to make prints on cloth or paper with your own photography.  I turn my photos into black and white and then darken the black as much as I can.  The copies of these need to be toner copies when you send them off for making Thermofax screens.  HOWEVER, I have an Epson CX4800 printer that uses Durabright inks.  Believe it or not, I accidentally send these prints to my screen maker and she was able to make screens that work perfectly from them, SO that means that the Durabright black ink has enough toner in them to burn a screen with.  I was amazed.  But for most of you out there using an inkject printer, this won’t work.  You need copies with toner in the ink, either from a laser printer or a copy machine.  I hear the copy machines with toner are getting rare.

So here is the list of people that I know from the quiltart list who make Thermofax screens for a small fee.  Get in touch with them!  Your other option is to spend tons of money purchasing one of the old machines that does this and spending money on supplies for it.  I find it easier just to make my designs or prepare my photos and just send them off to these gals.

Pam Relitz is in the Chicago area:        rockitz@tds.net

Bobbie Vance is in the Indianapolis area:    fiberartbv@aol.com

Lynn Krawczyk, I believe is in Michigan:   tatgirl207@earthlink.net

Construction fence rubbing

7/26/11 Update…I just received a comment asking to add this link to my list of Thermofax screen makers: http://www.northwoodstudios.us/screen_making_services.html

Check them out!