Experiments in Malachite

Working on some nummies with watercolors, inks, and golden's fluid acrylic paints.  Crow is from my stencil collection through StencilGirl Products!

As I said earlier I totally forgot that I had the watercolor crayons so I broke them out and started making some color palettes with the various crayons to see what colors will work in an upcoming series of one offs.  I'm loving the blues and greens for sure with malachite being my favorite thus far.

Junkin in June

More washi tape, from my favorite source Pixi's in Gilbert, IA. I have to admit that keeping a personal journal has become a lot more fun now that I've started incorporating all of those elements I've been collecting, but had no place in my regular artwork!  

Picked these up from one of the vendors at JB Knacker in Gilbert, IA this afternoon during their annual Junkin in June event!  

My watercolor issue resolved now that I've been reminded that I own sets of Caran D'Ache's Aquarelle watercolor crayons as I wasn't looking forward to replacing 20 year old dried up tubes of watercolor paints anytime soon!  Now that I'm using my aquarelle's again I can take my time and buy the colors I need preferably on sale as sets or as single tubes.

Patternless Skirt

Almost finished, the waste band and hem are next.

Natural, Indigo, and Rust dyed cotton muslin fabric.

It should have taken 45 minutes to construct from start to finish but since I accidentally sewed it together (wrong sides) twice it took about two hours!  So I decided I'll finish the waste band tomorrow and think about how I want to finish the hem.

Journal Pages and Stencils

From this...

To this...

I played around in a handmade journal this evening with my new paints, oil bars, and inks and my Black Birds in Tree and Three Crows Stencils.  Tomorrow I will finish out these pages after the oil bar dries.

Paints used:
Matisse Flow
Golden Fluid Acrylics

Inks used:
Daler-Rowney FW inks
Liquidtex inks

Oil bars used:
Shiva Paintstiks
Shiva Paintstiks Metallics

Thoughts on Eco-Dyeing

Today I shared some thoughts on my other blog about why I do not consider myself an eco-dyer.  The studio purge continues and I will share photos and updates throughout the month. It's a great feeling to know that the materials I no longer need to create art with are going to studios where they will be utilized!

Done is Betther than Perfect?

Lynn Krawczyk asked this question on her blog this morning and my response was:

"Perfection is an addiction to disappointment"

I used to get myself wound up and pretty tightly over my work an wanting it to be perfect, now not so much.  One of the things I've come to realize is that once a piece is done if I don't like it a year later it's ok to change the work or even destroy it, but by striving for perfection I would never finish the piece. 

We can remain stuck and live with continual disappointment or we can move forward declare it done and create more works of art.