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Archive for the ‘thermofax’ Category

This and That

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

scootercute

A 5 month old puppy requires almost as much attention as a 5 month old child. Scooter is adjusting well to our household. He wants Maggie to play with him and she just isn’t into that – cranky old lady. He kept us up the first night. The second night I got the idea to have talk radio (progressive, of course) near his crate. At 3:30, he was howling again. The station had gone off the air so I found one on all night. Last night he was quiet all night long. He is learning to walk on a leash. Today, we had a good 45 minute aerobic walk. He loves to stop and say hi to other dogs which Maggie never has cared to do. We are working on the housebreaking. It requires someone to watch him at all times for visual cues that he needs to go. As I said, we are working on it. He is now playing with all of his toys and running up and down the basement stairs to hang out with me. I am his favorite person. I don’t know how he will take my leaving for almost 2 weeks. Here he is in the studio with me. He got an aok from the vet.

scooterinstudio

I can’t believe how fast this month is flying by. I leave for Kansas City in a week from Friday. I have a lot to do before then. Today, I did my thermofax test prints for Jane Dunnewold. She posted on the Complex Cloth list for volunteers who have a thermofax to do some prints using different paint spreaders, including one that she sent us. Here are my prints. I used red Versatex Acrylic printing ink on muslin.

First is the print made with the paint spreader sent by Jane. It was the best print, I have to admit. It is one of those plastic thingies for creating texture in paint, but we used the smooth edge.

janepaintspreaderprint

This is what I usually use on a small screen, a credit card. Not so good.

ccthermofaxprint

This is a Bondo spreader. It is thicker than the other paint spreader and was not as good.

bondothermofaxprint

A lot of people use a foam paint brush for the screens, this created very uneven printing.

foamrollerthermofaxprint

I went in to get my hair cut and the color back. I tried going gray and that was how I felt, gray and old. So, here I am, red again.

redisback

Tomorrow, I have STASH at Reva’s. M & M are getting to meet Scooter tomorrow, for the first time. I am sure it will be love at first sight.

Thermofax Day

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

I was up and out of the house early today. I had to have a fasting blood draw. Four hours later, I got a message from the lab. All my tests were normal. My cholesterol is now down to 160 and the HDL was 54 so my ratio is 2.96 – not bad!

Yesterday, I had a great time doing another gallery talk to about 12 people. The group that arranged the talk took me out to lunch afterwards. When I got home, I had a message from one of them and they had decided to buy the Dome of the Rock piece for their church. Woohoo! I have now sold 5 pieces out of the 13. Just feel so blessed, that is all I can say. I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the lovely comments about my art.

Today, my goal was to get caught up on conference registrations and make some thermofax screens. I accomplished both. I had a bit of a melt down when I couldn’t find the thermofax screen fabric. My studio and office are still and disorganized mess from the renovation and the frenzy of work in December. We finally found it.

I made a heart for the class on Saturday. Judy sent me this design from some freezer paper stencils that she had made. I love this.

valentinescreenprint

I also made a screen of this fancy bird.I thought it would be cute to put a heart in its beak.

fancybirdscreenprint

I also did this screen. You are only seeing a portion of it. What is it?

guesswhatscreenprint

Catch Up Day

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Today, I accomplished  a lot of  things that had been hanging out there, just bugging me. I am coming up on a few days which could bring utter chaos to my life — the finishing and hanging of my show and the launching of registration for the Surface Design Off the Grid conference, for which I am the registrar. I am turning the dining room into the registrar’s office so that Mr C can go back to the basement and finish what he had started when I kicked him out!! I have to get copies of letters and supply lists done, buy stamps and envelopes and start the online data entry. Whew!

I made a thermofax from a pdf that Kristin sent me and got it shipped to her. I also whipped up this little gilded pear wall hanging to go into another mailing.

lapoire

I am one of the invited artists for Virginia Speigel’s Reverse Auction for Fiberarts for a Cause. Because of my show, I could not get a quilt done so I am giving one of my hand-dyed, discharged and foiled scarves. I had a couple of scarves with the discharged circles. For this one, I made a thermofax screen of x’s. I screened the foiling glue onto the scarf:

gluexs

Then, I ironed on copper foil. I call this the hugs and kisses scarf!

hugsandkisses

hugsandxesdetail

Would you bid on this?

Here is a sneak peek at my next project, which is a wall of Palestinian graffiti and art from photos taken in the West Bank.

barriergrafitti

Tonight, Mr C and I went to see a really good film — Doubt. It was perfectly cast. All of the actors were superb and gave this film validity. It is not a feel good film. It has some funny moments, mainly provided by the character played by the fabulous Amy Adams.

Woe is Me

Monday, December 8th, 2008

This was one of those Mondays when nothing was going right. I know you want to hear all my woes, right?

Number one. My laptop died on Saturday. I thought it was caused be a dead battery and a power cord with a short. Turns out, there was a problem worse than that. Anyway, I got a pretty good deal on a trade-in and a new open box Mac I-book. Open box means that it was purchased and returned and I got it for a discount. I get the new Mac warranty. I also get a new carrying bag and a Lacie external back-up drive. I was hoping to pick it up this morning, after they had copied all my files to the new computer. But they called and said that it kept freezing up and so they had to try another method. Tonight, they called and I can pick it up tomorrow. Woohoo! Can’t wait.

Number two. This morning I packed up my nice clothes that are too big and took them to the nearest consignment shop. They only took about 1/4 of the things I took in. They said they were not “their” style. I said, Oh, that is why I can never find anything here. You don’t carry “my” style!! So tomorrow, I am going to call the Savvy Plus consignment store to see if they are interested. I find it amusing that they want items purchased in the past year to year and a half. And yet, when you look around the store, she see all this stuff that you know is older than that. Sigh. It is so much easier to go to the Good Will and forget about cash!!

Number three. Two weeks ago, I ordered 3 rolls of fabric prepared for printing on a large format computer. the company is ColorPlus, in Las Vegas. Last Tuesday, I called to find out where my stuff was. She said it had not been sent because the organza was not in. I said, just send the silk and the cotton – I needed it yesterday. She said she would send it priority mail. You guessed it. No fabric has arrived. I called again. I was told that they would call back in half an hour to let me know if it had been shipped. No phone call. I will try again and tell them I have 500 fiber artists reading my blog, and they will hear about my problem!! (Sometimes a little exaggeration works!)

Otherwise, it has been very pleasant around here. Olivier left at 4:30 this morning. I never got to take a photo of him in his cool coat, but I found one on the Internet. He is on the right. He found some wonderful vintage German-made opera glasses at an antique store on Saturday. We had a great lunch at Papa Haydn’s. The Bach Christmas Oratorio was absolutely divine. It includes 6 cantatas and is 3 hours long, but very worth it. It was followed by Wassail and cookies.

My latest project, while I wait for my fabric, is a collage titled “Pilgrimage”. I have printed a photo of our group on organza and also have a photo of footprints on silk. I have made thermofax screens of the religious symbols in the background. The orange linen will be the base for this. I am going to try writing on it with a syringe or tjanting tool.

Lastly, I was talking to Mr C in his office and looked out and saw this wonderful sight of water droplets on the strange flowers that bloom in the fall on the plant outside his window. I tried to get a clear photo of it using the close-up button. If you click on the photo, you can see the droplets a little better.

Here is another shot of the flowers.

My friend, Diane, takes incredibly beautiful macro shots of flowers. My camera cannot compete with hers, but I love trying!!

I Love Creating Complex Cloth

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Complex cloth is created by building up layers of surface design on fabric. It requires having a vision of where you are going, but the willingness to go with the flow because surface design is not an exact science — at least the way I do it!!

I must have the art cloth (that I can’t show you) done and shipped to Jane Dunnewold in Texas by Friday. So far I have overdyed, discharged and screen printed two central images – very abstract. I was not thrilled with my results as they were not as crisp as I would have liked. but as I said, there is nothing exact. So I started on my next layer this morning, first practicing on other fabric. I even e-mailed Rayna Gilman in a panic because I was feeling so insecure about printing on the silk. She reminded me that it is a process that you go through and the results will vary. So I forged ahead. I wanted to do some overall printing with found objects, like the vinyl mesh potato bags and bubble wrap. Here is the result on another piece of silk that I had in my stash. This is little blurry. You can see the bubble wrap print, but the mesh is more subtle. The circles are a thermofax screen that I made. I will print those on the art cloth tomorrow. I also want to create an image that I will foil.

silkbubbleprint.jpg

So, after doing this sample, I took a deep breath and started working on the large silk piece. Wow, this is addictive. The printing that I did today helped to integrate yesterday’s images and the parts that I didn’t like took on this amorphous and lovely appearance. That is why I love creating complex cloth.

I am falling behind in my homework for Liz’s class. I have skimmed the material that I downloaded this week-end. I think it is going to be lots of fun. Here is the workspace for the class that I have set up in my office next to my computer and scanner. I have to scan my work and post it on the yahoo site.

artclassworkspace.jpg

I bet you are wondering how I get anything done! Here are some pages from my journal for the class to prove that I am getting work done.

artclassjournal1.jpg

artjournal2.jpg

artjournaltextures.jpg

The last one is a composition using lots of different textures.

I must get some work done on the SDA website. Good night.