"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent; with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."~~Henri Matisse
…from The Crafter’s Workshop….
well, they’re not all new…top row: Mums, Aborigine, Summer; bottom row: Wonky Circles (Julie Fei-Fan Balzer), Birds, Antiquities. Now I just need to get them loaded into my Etsy shop. I LOVE the Crafter’s Workshop stencils.
I am working on setting up new web pages to list The Crafter’s Workshop stencils on. If you haven’t seen these yet, these are some of the newest hottest selling products on the market. I started working on new pages last year and now am back at it. I am selling them quite well out of my etsy shop.
Julie Fei-Fan Balzer is a new designer with her own designs for The Crafter’s Workshop. Her is her Henna Hands and Punchinella.
Another designer is Victoria Case. This is her Aspen Trees and Bamboo stencils.
And more Julie Balzer designs with Flower Frame and Leaf Frame. I am looking into carrying more of her designs. With designers coming on board to create the designs, let’s hope The Crafter’s Workshop can keep up with making all the orders! Until I get my web pages up, see my etsy shop for these stencils.
I played last night at creating backgrounds for Roz’ class. I enjoyed it immensely. I did use some acrylic inks to splatter on the pages, but they seemed to dry v…e…r…y slowly, so I am not pleased with them. I am wondering if the brand or the age of the inks might be the issue. I used a Crafter’s Workshop circle grid stencil and distress ink pads to make the designs. Distress ink is probably not going to be waterproof going forward, but we shall see. I enjoyed playing with the colors and textures.
Mixed Media Visual Journal
I REALLY like the mixed media paper…not as heavy as the watercolor, but takes the wet media very well.
So now I am making a list of Golden Fluid acrylic paints I need…I pretty much used up the only yellow I had.
The next photo is the 140 lb. watercolor journal.
I’ve been so busy and have not posted for awhile…shame on me! I think I will show you what I have been up to rather than tell you….
Decatur, IL – Tree Huggers Exhibit in front of the Decatur Arts Council–On my way to the quilt show one morning, I shot these pictures.. this was interesting to see!
Back home….loading new stencils from the Crafter’s Workshop in my etsy shop...these are totally fun to pattern cloth with…
Tea dying and color dyeing silk ribbon for a doll show….
…and dyeing doggie hoodies….
…and working on some artistic silk scarves for upcoming art fair…these have been dyed a base color, then stamped with soy wax, then painted with dye paint and are batching…
Silk scarves are my “practice” work…not only do I get to know the different types of silks, but I get to “play” and practice with designs and colors. Still have lots of different things to do and I will show you as I go along while I get ready for the art fair. But…today I think I want to make some paper/cloth…after I go to town and run some errands…later!
I’ve been to the AQS quilt show at Paducah, KY this week. On Tuesday, I drove down and met up with friends from back home. We hit Hancock’s, then went to Eleanor Burns, then to downtown. My friends, Betty and Steve Cummings from the Village Mercantile quilt shop in Boonville, IN were vending in the downtown area. I hung out with them a bit and saw the fiber art show across the street at the Yeiser Art Center. We spent the night at Drury Inn and Suites which graciously provided us with dinner of pizza and salad, baked potatoes with the trimmings, nacho chips and drinks, as well as breakfast the next morning. It’s a great place to stay.
Wednesday morning we left for the quilt show. The one major thing I noticed about the show was the extremely high quality of a lot of the quilts. I think this year, the competition must have been much stiffer to get in, just because there were so many high quality quilts. I roamed through the vendors, finally finding the ones I really needed to find (that would be Pro-Chem for dyes). In the afternoon, I went to the Embellishment Village booth and worked for Greg and Betty Blais, doing Angelina demos. Met up with my friends for a great Mexican dinner and then found my new “hotel” for the night, staying with a very nice couple for the night. I then worked again for Embellishment Village on Thursday and came home that night. I didn’t buy much. My work for Embellishment Village paid for a few things I wanted to stock up on for my own booth. I got some new Botanicals stencils, new Angelina colors, the new Happy Holidays rubbing plates from Cedar Canyon Textiles. I also stocked up on glitter towers and foiling glue and patterns.
For myself, I purchased Kerr Grabowski’s dvd on Deconstructed Screen Printing. After watching it yesterday, I am anxious to get to work! This morning I am working on printing silk scarves. It feels good to be getting back in the creative mode!
I am back from the Decatur show, my head is full…of thoughts and things to do this week. There is the possibility of some workshops with the quilt guilds ahead. And now I am the proud inheritor of my grandmother’s Singer Featherweight sewing machine! I spent some time with my mother this weekend and she gave me grandma’s machine. I am excited about that. It’s good to be home and today is a “tired” day. I am resting.
Monday ramblings has turned into…Tuesday Ramblings
I did some demos of stenciling with paintstiks at the show which sold my new stencils very well. I oversold the leaves stencil, don’t ya’ know! I have plenty more on order and will be putting them up on my website soon.
Using the 1/2 inch paintstik brush with short bristles made specifically for use with paintstiks, I stenciled these leaves onto a light gray hand dye. After applying one color and leaving the stencil in place, I applied a second color in various places to provide shading and dimension. People were quite impressed with them. Paintstiks are wonderful for stencils and rubbings. The only downside I can see about them is that you can’t be in a hurry with them. They do take some time to dry. After all, it is oil paint. But it doesn’t take the drying time of an oil painting.
Here is what a section of the Southwest stencil looks like. I did repeats of the design. Again, I used more than one color for dimension.
These are available for $3 each plus shipping.
I see several possibilities with these designs. They can be applied to a border and then used as the quilting design; just quilt around them as it’s already marked. One could apply fusible to the back and cut them out to make applique. You could also do some thread painting on them to fill in the vein and stem areas, then cut them out for applique.
