Copper Iris

Beeswax, oil bar, copper leaf on Baltic Birch plywood. 8 x 8 x 2 inches.

If your interested the in more information about the piece I created, I teach an online class called Encaustic Painting for Fabric and Collage

Printing 101

Can you guess which piece, I printed on, is cardstock?

Wounded

Well I'm wounded so am now officially done for today - studio wise, or at least until I stop bleeding. I'll go take notes and write up curriculem instead.

And the wound didn't even occur in my studio! I was picking up one of the fiesta ware bowls, it has a chip in it, and got a huge sliver of ceramic, or whatever the stuff is made of, in my finger. Of course when you want an xacto knife to be razor sharp it isn't so that made removing it even harder. My fingers are very calloused a needle wouldn't have done what I needed for a piece of ceramic this big.

It doesn't help that my printer won't cooperate, I've spent the better part of two hours aligning the heads, cleaning the heads and the nozzles and I'm still getting lines in my print jobs.

More on that later when I can type better.

Dottie

I met Dottie at the local watering hole today - it's literally a watering hole, see my other blog Survival Kitchen for a picture of said watering hole.

Dottie is a mule, she's only a couple of years old and apparently her coloring is highly unusual. I have a fancy for mules for some odd reason, ditto burrows and donkeys. I think it's the ears and the soulful face - and maybe the challenge for stubborness.

Bleah

I finally figured out what made me so sick this morning around 5 am, no I"m not pregnant! It's all of the cigerette wrappers I licked last night.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???

Well it's for a project I'll post more about it later. I just licked the last 25 of them and BLEAAAAH is all I can say, those things are gnarly. They are drying now, the glue anyway. More later.

Poor Truck

Well this is what it looks like so far, John is having a dickens of a time getting the old exhaust system off of the truck, that'll probably be all he'll accomplish tonight, and hopefully it won't take long to put the new one on tomorrow. All I need to do is find the warrenty for hte old one as it developed a rather large hole in it in less than three years.

At least it'll be ready for my trip to New Jersey, and then Oklahoma. I'm teaching in NJ July/August at Peters Valley, and then in Nebraska I think in both in August September , and Oklahoma in September/October. And I think that'll about wrap up my travel schedule for the year.

We were supposed to go to Nebraska this weekend, should have left last night. But John was unable to get the day off today. It's too bad too as I would have loved to have spent a weekend doing nothing but field research - collecting plants, roots, and fungi for NA dyeing. We were going to stay with a friend in their cabin, nice weekend off to tell the truth. Well I was planning on finishing off those last 6 (more like 20 or so) pages on my thesis while there - no phones, no computers, no pets, no interruptions - you get the picture. The place where we would be staying has buffalo/bison and all sorts of wonderful native prairie plants. Oh well, I can't drive my truck w/o an exhaust system plus it was only getting louder and louder not enjoyable for me at all.

Here's a special pic of hubby crawling around underneath my truck, isn't he such a sweetie! I'm glad he's mechanically inclined, it'd drive me batty if he wasn't actually.

Links

I'm planning to update my blog links this weekend so if you'd like to trade links please leave me a note. I'll really get it done this time, hopefully I won't have a killer headache again.

Big Sale and More

I'm having a 40% Off Storewide Sale this weekend, starts today through Sunday (Central Time USA). I've done this two weekends in a row now and it's great! I'm selling a lot of stuff I want to move, and have plans for new inventory already!!!

Also I'm clearancing some book titles so check out the Summer Clearance Sale page on my webstore as well.

I need to make room for my new products - art cloth and hand-dyed fibers.

The Prairie Fibers Company

Osage Orange Dyed Wood

These were dyed with osage orange, a natural dye material. The wood is baltic birch.

New Piece

This is a recent piece of compost dyed fabric, it's cotton, found it on the end of my table underneath everything. I've decided I need to stitch this piece, I see all sorts of wonderful natural things in it's surface. I might add some other fabrics with if I ever find my pile of compost dyed fabrics. I've found my pile of solid/mottled natural dyed cotton fabrics, but not my compost dyed ones. You know it's a good thing that the Good Lord had the sense to attach my head or I would have lost it decades ago.

Fabric Fabric Everywhere!!!

Ok occasionally one has to take time out of ones regular work schedule to do some cleaning. I have a monstorous pile of fabric on the end of my table, taking up valuable real estate. I also lost a very large pile of compost dyed fabrics, adn these are all large pieces as in 1 yard or larger, in the vicinity of 30 to 40 pieces. Who knows where I sat that down at.

Gelatin Plate

While I paint and work very fast, in fact I have to force myself to slow down so my students can see what I'm doing, my paints are still drying too quickly on my gelatin plate. It is very dry here right now, very dry.

So tomorrow I'll have to get some retarder for my paint. I can't wait. I had to stop tonight because I ran out of surfaces to work on and that's a first for me.

Actually, I had forgotten how addictive printing could be. I'm going to have to dig through my fabric stash and see what I have that can be sacrificed for the cause. I have some commercial batiks that I'm not so fond of anymore that'd make good candidates. I don't think my natural dyes will show up well on them though as these fabrics are already pretty brilliant in color, but the synthetic paints will show up nicely, especially the metallic ones.

So now I'm in the process of photographing and video taping the gelatin plate process for my classes. It's a lot of fun, and that's an understatement! Unfortuantley it's getting late here so I need to think about turning in for the night. I'll try to remember to post pics, but the memory is a bit lacking of late.

Thread Carrier

Well I was offered many many ideas for toting my threads around but this one won out by far, mainly because I already owned the container. It's hinged which is great as I don't have to worry about losing the lid, a typical occurance in my studio!

As you can see I have a bit of things in my box for my projects, what you don't see are the tubs and tubs of other items that I need a carrier for to get from the design studio to the wet studio. This would include all of the silk ribbons, lace, trims, and buttons.

My dream is to someday have both studios on the same floor and somehow connected to one another, with the bathroom in close proximity. Ok maybe this is more fantasy than dream.

Cochineal

I'll tell you more about this later after I get my project done. But I dyed this piece of wool, and that's what I'll tell you about later, with cochineal bugs. Actually my dyebath is about three months old now.

Oh and this is what happens when you leave your cochineal bath unattended, needless to say my studio really stunk after the pot boiled over.

Photo EZ

If you know how to expose this stuff please let me know. I've tried everything to get my images onto the screens and nada, so either this stuff is a bad batch ...

Gelatin Plate Printing

Tomorrow is a day dedicated to Gelatin Plate and other things, my supplies finally showed up today. I ran out of materials to work with, I'm still cringing at the cost of my favorite paper, haven't bought it yet either, but I admit it I'm a Rives BFK paper junkie! Unforutantely I cannot purchase this paper locally anymore so I'm stuck ordering a carton of the paper, you don't even want to know how expensive this is going to be, trust me you could buy a lot of thread!

Here are some pieces of silk dupoini that I made prints onto using my gelatin plate, I used natural dyes, lac extract, on the plate. If I can find it I'll put the before curing and washing pic up so you can see just how much color is lost in the process. I'm still getting used to, after all these years, making my extract solutions about 50% darker than I think I'll actually need. It takes some getting used to because your eyes tell your brain it's way too dark but in the wash out phase, especially on cotton, it typically comes out where it really should be value and color wise.

Of Studios and Women

Well what can I say except Of Mice and Men was taken. Anyway...

I've been busy the last two days, and barring any brain crushing headaches that send me back to the hospital I'm hoping that tomorrow will be a great day as well. The doc still doesn't really know what happened except that it was a combination of things and it's probably a miracle that I'm even here.

So far I've had a CT scan, a MRI, an eye exam (20 20 vision what more could a girl pushing 40 ask for right) and chest x-rays. Talk about your 40 mile work up! Anyway I see another doc on Monday. I'm thinking it's a combination of being bit, twice, stress from the shopping cart refusing to cooperate, and the anesthesia still wearing off, from surgery I had 4 weeks ago. It's just a guess, but my friends and I are starting to think it's the 40 mile melt down, the body gets older I stress it out and it attacks me back - sound fair enough???

Here's a pic for some visual eye candy, in progress as ususal. I'll be sure to post a pic of the piece when it's done.

Some minor changes

I made some minor changes to my art website k. baxter packwood today so if you see something you are interested in there is additional information on my art website.

I'm in sore need of updating everything, I have some 40 scarves, all of which are gorgeous, that need their pictures taken and then they need to be put up on my art website for sale. I just haven't found the time but maybe this weekend, if I sell these scarves then I can make more. Sometimes I wish a little photography elf would show up in my studio and take pics while I'm merrily working away and put them up on the websites for me.

Next I need to get all of my links updated and working, if you'd like to share links please let me know. I'm still trying to figure out how to make logo buttons, well I have some made but I can't seem to get them uploaded to the blog, even though I made a draft of the image already. In some respects I loathe computers, they are so difficult to get things done on.

Bite Marks

I went to the emeregency room yesterday, and after a cat scan I was sent home with some drugs and told to stay out of hte light and away from noise for 24 hours. I was told I had had a "neurological event".

Well I found the cause this morning, don't know if the quacks in this town can handle it or not, but I have a bite mark, looks pretty much like the mark of a brown recluse. If so this is my third time being bit, which can't possibly be good for me.

I was in the rose bushes, trying to get to the water valve so I could water my garden, don't ask I'll take pics and you'll understand why. Anyway I felt something bite my legs, twice actually and I do have two bite marks. I shrugged it of as skeeters and watered the gardens.

I was in the emergency room a half hour later. Anyway...

Untitled in Red all pinned up

And somewhere to go! I haven't decided the orientation yet, other than it will be vertical. I need to flip it 180 degrees and see if I like it the other way first, then I"m off to audition threads and thread colors. I definately decided on machine stitching, dh informed me that he knew I'd decide on that as hand stitching would take too long on such a large piece; it's 54" or more long.

Now I just need to go fetch my music from the wet studio and I'm good to go. I may do some attachements to this piece, haven't decided yet. I will redeem my sample piece however, with attachements, and a psuedo applique of sorts, I'll show you all later. I have a quilt piece I need to get done for Doing Small Things and this sample piece is going to fit right in with what I was thinking.

Untitled in Red part two

I have it pinned to some batting, Hobbs cotton quilt batting, and a linen backing fabric that is a dark mauve color - dyed with natural dyes. As soon as the humidity level in the house drops, probably in an hour, I'll start stitching on it, until it sits in a wad on my desktop as it's too sticky in here to touch anything.

Wet Studio

A nice collection of fabrics to play with. I'm not nearly as busy as I'd like to be, but a certain husband of mine didn't have time to make the new platform for the encaustic pots to go onto, so I have to wait until he gets home. Normally I'd use them on my counter top, but that's well out of view of my camera, which is mounted, permanantly to the ceiling. I need the platform so I can work on my screen printing table without melting my surface, this also happens to be where the camera is pointing.

I've decided that shutting off the phones is the way to go! I'm interrupted way way too much by the phone and it's no wonder I never get anything acomplished.

Untitled in Red

The coloring is off a bit here and it's too icky outside to photograph it outside today. It's a bit darker, but not by much. Here's two views hopefully you can decifer the color better this way. I'm hopping excited to quilt this beauty.

Btw this IS the piece that you see a few posts down from this one! As you can see washing it darkens the colors after composting. There were quite a few rusty nails on the fabric, rust i.e., iron shifts red bearing dyestuffs towards the blue end, or in this case purple, end of the spectrum. Ooooooh the bug to create.

Fertile Ground Before Washing

This is what the fabric looked like whence I unwrapped the bundle, before it went into the washing machine - three trips before the water rinsed clear. So you can see that the colors darkened slightly upon washing, but not much.

Fertile Ground

I can't wait to start in on this piece "Fertile Ground" I'm so glad I composted this piece of fabric, I have a few other duds I'm going to compost now, including a rather large rusted piece. The rubbery stuff from the gutta is still fighting coming off, I've been picking bits of it off, and it went through the washer three times. It needs to be ironed before I can do any stitching.

The weather here has been really weird all day, and it's humid beyond belief I guess it decided it was time for summer to begin?! I just know I"m tired of the sound the dehumidifier makes already, and it's not even June yet.

The other piece of fabric

Maybe I'll use this piece with the red fabric piece some how???

QSDS

I was going to send fabric to QSDS but have finally decided not to do so. One my fabric isn't done, the way I want it to be done, and two I want to turn these two pieces into quilts. Recenlty I got the bug to start producing again, both yardage and artwork, and I want to keep with that momentum. Which means in a nutshell NOT shipping of the fabrics I love to an exhibition to be sold off but rather using them myself.

I've also gotten the bug to do handstitching as well. I have this gorgeous red crinkle crepe that I need to wash yet, and will hand quilt/stitch it when it comes to construction time. I need to dye up some other reds to go with is as I'm thinking of carving this one up and using it bit by bit.

Another Love

I showed the fabric, that I love so, to my hubby, he said it was nice but he likes what I have hanging on the line a lot better.

This is a piece of pink cotton that was originally dyed with cochineal On cotton to get the best colors you really need to alum tannin alum your fabrics, and this gives dull dusty flesh toned pinks, if your cochineal vat isn't concentrated enough. I then screen printed over it using natural dyes.

This cotton is really soft and has a loser weave making it ideal for hand stitching.

I'm in Love

I'm in love with this piece of fabric, I can't wait for the curing process to be done with, about 3 weeks this time of year. I can then wash it and get to the business of stitching it. Should have taken a better pic of it too, it's screen printed with lac over a cochineal immersion bath on silk dupioni.

More fabric

These are composted fabrics, I undid the bundles tonight, I'm going to leave them on the line, though they are almost dry now, because it's going to rain tonight. It'll give them a nice preliminary rinse, and it won't cost me anything!

That's my husbands pile behind the cloth, it's leaving soon as we will be doing some landscaping, ie leveling out the yard. So we now need to find a place to put all of my garden fencing and the like. Gotta keep the rodents out of the garden. Normally I don't mind sharing but we are over run with chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels. I"m not sure what the ground hog eats.

No Room in the Inn

Here's what you do with fabric you don't like, you give it a make over! These natural dyed silk pieces are drying after having been screen printed with natural dyes.

Picture of Me

My aunt commented that there is a weird box in the far right hand corner. Yes this is where the picture of me is supposed to go, so far I've tried several things and it won't accept and of hte formats it states it wants. I even had my image reduced to 32Kb and you get a max of 50Kb. I uploaded the image, saved it both as a .jpeg and as a .gif it wouldn't accept either format. So who knows, so here you get to see the pic I was going to use, how I'm going to get it into my profile is beyond me.

Done

I'm so excited I figured out how to make the changes by myself. I'm learning more code than I ever thought imaginable!

Blog Changes Again

I managed to find a free 3 column template for my blog, from blogger no less. Scroll down on the right side, when you get to free blogger templates go there, there are a lot of options.

However, while I like my new 3 column template a lot I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get rid of the header and footer images. I have my own images I want to insert here.

I've been looking at the template for a couple of hours now and still cannot find it, so if you find the string of code, that will actually change cause that one at the bottom of the code isn't working for me, please let me know.

Thanks - now back to our regularly sceduled surface designing!

Blog Changes

I'm hoping to change this blog into a three column blog today, so there will be some changes, and even some mistakes.

Gelatin Plate

I love it when everything goes the way it's supposed to, look no bubbles!!!

New Online Classes

My new Online classes begin tomorrow, I'm teaching three classes simultaneously this time,

Gelatin Plate Printing starting tomorrow (Tuesday)

Digital Printing - starting Wednesday

Encaustic Painting for Fabric and Collage - starting Thursday

These classes will be information rich, I need to go update my web descriptions now, I see I forgot to do that.

Samples

I've been composting and screenprinting away today. Here I have some fabric that was already dyed red, with a madder lac dyebath. I've wrapped the bundle in copper wire and put it out doors.

I've been working with this lace tablecloth for the better part of the day, screenprinting it as a resist. I've printed up lots of fabric, some yardage pieces, all using natural dyes, and a natural thickener as my print paste.

It just goes to show that if you get in the studio, and start producing, and keep at it long enough the creative juices will come back. It helps that I brought my little portable stereo to the basement so I could listen to my music. I listen to alot of instrumental, it helps get me into the creative mood/flow.

Birch Fabric Detail

I Got My Groove Back & QSDS

I'll have to post pics of the fabric later, but I've basically been sitting on some fabric for five years now. It's a huge piece of silk dupioni(sp?) that I compost dyed. I've wanted to do something with this fabric ever since it came out of my washing machine, but to date have only hung it as yardage.

Well tonight I got my groove back, it's been a long two years peppered with too many dead relatives. Anyway, John and I were out looking at some fresh cut downs, cottonwood, locust, birch, and ash. He brought home some logs of each variety. I went gah gah over the birch, or I should say the bark anyway.

I hope to work on this piece this weekend, I have too much to do tonight, plus I need to get the other elements ready first. But I went to town photographing the wood, the next step is sketches and some samples of things I want to try. I should have it all worked out by Saturday, and will probably spend most of Sunday working on the pieces.

I'm excited the deadline for QSDS has been changed to the 26th, so I still have time to submit my yardages. There's a piece, further down the blog, that I plan to submit. So if your interested in the piece it is for sale and you can buy it at QSDS.

Rust & Clay Dyeing Book

It's done and out the door. It took two of us to finally figure out the reason behind the video snaffu. But FINALLY it's on it's way.

My husband gave me a high compliment, as he was burning cd/dvd's he said it looked really nice.

This coming from a man who is impressed by nothing!!!

Anyway I have a total of four video clips on the CD Book, each clip discusses one technique, the ones that I'm asked about most frequently. You can purchase the book here at Rust & Clay Dyeing Book

Twilight's Mystery

Here is a picture of Twilight's Mystery, a black male llama. He's a beauty and if the natives in town wouldn't go so bonkers he'd be mine! But alas the city fathers always win on these issues.

Twighlight is for sale and information about him can be had from

Blooming Prairie Llamas

GOL Cleopatra

GOL Cleopatra is a female. For purchasing information please click here Blooming Prairie Llamas

Again June and David, the owners of these beauties are moving 1200 miles in about a month and need to sell their herd. They are located in central Iowa, if you are interested please contact them at the weblink above, it's highlighted in green, or email me directly.

Kimberly

BFL Copperstar

BFL Copperstar is a female. For purchasing information please click here Blooming Prairie Llamas

SOLD!!!

Superstitions Sable

-- Superstitions Sable is a female. For purchasing information click here Blooming Prairie Llamas

SOLD!!!

Cream Puff Llama

Cream Puff is a female. For purchasing information please click here Blooming Prairie Llamas

SOLD!!!

Masterlock's Perfect Combination

Masterlock's Perfect Combination a male Llama. For purchasing info click here Blooming Prairie Llamas

JJ-HH's Chip N Dale

Here is a picture of JJ-HH's Chip N Dale, a male Llama. You can find out more information about Chip at Blooming Prairie Llamas

SOLD!!!

Llamas

I have a friend who is moving 1200 miles in about a month. She has a few llamas she needs to sell. Check out this site here if you are interested, Blooming Prairie Llamas is located here in central Iowa
Blooming Prairie Llamas

Another view

Here's another view of my fabric, now that it's been dried. I really like my photography lamps, why I haven't used them until now I do no know. I know they don't work well with the digital camera, I'll have to dig out the slr for that task. So the fabric may appear a bit bluish in this pic. I may take a pic outside tomorrow, in the daylight.

I haven't decided if I want to screenprint on this piece yet or not, it's very tempting. It'll be the first time I've ever screenprinted on a piece of my compost dyed fabric. I have some madder lac extract made up that would add some real dimension to this piece. If I were to use the osage ornage instead it'll end up discharging some of the surround colors, which could be really neat. Decisions decsions.

Speaking of which I'm learning a very valuable lesson, burning cd's/dvds with video takes forever. Oh and I need new/more ram for my computer as this will make the burning process go faster.

Detail Shot

Here's a detail shot of this fabric. It feels so so so good to be making fabric again.

Long view of the fabric

When it's dry I'll hang it up on the wall and take a better pic of this piece, it's gorgeous. It's silk charmuse that has been compost dyed, in fact this is the sample piece I made in the video/DVD.

QSDS

I have a couple of pieces of fabric I may send to QSDS for the fabric contest. Here's one such piece it's been compost dyed.

Btw if your interested in learning how to make this fabric then check out my new DVD on Mark Making with Nature available on my webstore at
The Prairie Fibers Company

I'm still debating whether I want to screen print any designs onto the piece before I ship it out.

Fabric Painting. I teach this in my Mark Making with Nature: Surface Design with Natural Dyes class, I also cover the information in the DVD by the same title.