home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for the ‘painting fabric’ Category

My Happy Place

Sunday, April 27th, 2014

 

artnouveauprint

I went down to my studio for the first time since I dumped the last load of stuff before we moved into the condo. It is the end of the month and I needed to get a print done for the Printed Fabric Bee.  The theme is art nouveau.

This is what my studio looked like when I walked in.

messylovejoystudio

Nothing has been put away. I grabbed the stuff off my work table and put my print board up and went to work. First, I found my Bose radio and turned to my favorite rock music station!

I had cut a couple of freezer paper stencils. I wanted to do an art nouveau stylized flower. I decided to do some wavy lines of dots first. Here is my stencil.

browndotstencil

browndotpaintstencil

browndots

I used the skinny end of a chopstick to add yellow dots to the brown dots.

yellowdots

Here is my stylized flower stencil.

flowerstencil

This is the 6 inch piece that is going to the winner of the printed fabric pack. The piece for Jackie is up at the top.

68nchartnouveau

I went to my studio in a great deal of pain. My lower back has been killing me again. All the shuffling and packing and unpacking has taken a toll.

The thing is, I was so happy and stress free working in my studio after all this time that I suddenly realized I was not in pain. And, I was so happy. So happy that I started to cry. I am really looking forward to getting my studio organized and getting back some creative time.

 

 

A Crazy, Busy Time

Sunday, March 23rd, 2014

secondresult

I have so much going on right now. There is very little down time. Tomorrow, at 5 pm, we get the keys and garage door opener for the condo and we no longer will need to be escorted every time we want to go there – yippee! On Tuesday, we are meeting the condo manager to go over some things and I also have an appointment with a decorator to pick out window treatments.

Today, as started moving my stuff to the new studio. The first to go were my Ikea cabinets. They are the heaviest and most difficult of all the stuff to go so it was a relief to get that done.

ikeamove

Just as we were leaving the studio, I looked up and saw this shadow of trees on the wall. A very good omen, I think.

studioshadow

For the last couple of days, I have been trying to get ahead of the game and get my printing done for the Printed Fabric Bee because I am going to be otherwise occupied at the end of the month. The Queen Bee has asked for a woodland/forest motif. We have had a couple of sunny days so I decided to do some sunprinting.

My first attempt looked like this when I put it in the sun.

firstsunprint

I didn’t get a photo of the result – only a detail shot.

firstdunprintresult

I thought it needed another layer so I decided to do some printing with fern leaves. First, I painted the fern.

paintedfern

Then I lay it on the fabric and press with tissue paper.

tissuepaperpress

Voila!

fernprint

I decided that I had a hot mess. It doesn’t look too bad in this photo, but I decided to do another.

muckedupfirstsunprint

I wanted to do a more foresty color scheme. I mixed blue and orange paint to make brown and added some yellow to the green. The brown was sort of purple so I added yellow.

secondsunprint

The resulting sun print is up at the top. I think I will leave it as is! I have to cut a 12 inch square and a 6 inch square. I am happy to have that behind me.

The Stage is Set

Monday, January 13th, 2014

pinkgraffiti

We finally finished the cleaning, purging, sorting and staging in preparation for listing our home at the end of this week. The photography for the listing was done today. So what did I do this afternoon? I went down to my studio and got out the graffiti piece and some neon pink paint and went to work on it. That middle section was purple before and the values did not work. Here it is. I am really liking the change to pink.

graffitiweb

I am so ready to get my creative life back!! In the meantime, here are some shots of the house that I took today. First, two overviews of the kitchen.

Processed with VSCOcam

Processed with VSCOcam

The staging consultant suggested these vignettes.

kitchenwinestage

kitchencoffeestage

kitchenlemonstage

A bit hokey, but whatever works!

Here is my pristine studio.

Processed with VSCOcam

We moved two chairs from the living room down to the family room and put the chairs from there in storage.

Processed with VSCOcam

And our bedroom:

stagedbedroom

And a little vignette in the master shower.

bathroomstage

So now you know what I have been up to. Tomorrow, I have a meeting at Trinity for the upcoming juried show. Wednesday, I have to finish detailing the places that people open doors to when they are walking through your home. Thursday, Mr Maid and his crew are here all day, deep cleaning, steam cleaning the kitchen floor and washing windows inside and out. Friday, the listing will go live and the signs go up. Saturday, we may have our first lookers. Sunday there will be an open house. The next Tuesday, we have the realtors open house. And so it begins.

I just want to remind you all about Virginia Spiegel’s Fiber 5K to Fight Cancer. Click on the logo in my sidebar to see all the great prizes and the details for participating.

This and That

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

5kforcancerfabric

Multi-tasking is my middle name. I gave up on discharging this fabric. Instead, I used a Stencil Girl stencil with irregular lines to print. I experimented with some different paints and ended up with Jacquard’s Lumiere Halo Blue Gold. It was the effect that I was going for. This photo is not that good. It is hard to photograph metallic paints, I think. Anyway, I am happy with it.

Mr C has been busy. He spackled the nail holes from the wall where I had hung my crosses. Then, it got a fresh coat of paint. It looks pretty bare. We will put the mirror back up and maybe some generic art.

blankwall

That bench is a church pew that was gifted to us by our church in Wilmington, NC. We help to fund the redoing of the altar and a new organ. They had too many pews for the new space. It is one of those things we may have to give up.

Today, I wrapped gifts, which I do not enjoy doing. This one was pretty easy. I had a black box and I used Washi Tape to decorate it. Perfect for the architect in the family.

Processed with VSCOcam

After a quick trip to Trader Joe’s this afternoon, I set about baking some goodies for the Christmas Eve meal — the traditional chocolate mint brownies and two gluten free recipes for me — pecan tassies and Girl Scout Samoa cookies. I still have to do the chocolate dipping and caramel/coconut top for the cookies.

pecantassies

Tonight, we went to the local Paleo restaurant near us. They brought me this tumbler of wine, which I enjoyed. A little boy came over to our table and asked if he could have the dinosaurs. I told him I was finished playing with them. He looked at me quizzically and then grinned.

dinosaursandwine

And so tomorrow is Christmas eve. I am doing dinner here and Steph is doing Christmas Day dinner. I think she is making tamales.

Then, the crunch begins. More decluttering and organizing and cleaning. I move into my new little studio space the first week of January. It is both exhilarating and exhausting just to think about it.

Some Painting and a Lot of House Stuff

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013

organzapaintingdropcloth

This morning I washed out my orange dyed fabric. Reveal will be coming up soon. Then I painted silk organza for my seasonal piece. The above is my drop cloth. I always love how the drop cloth looks after a painting fest.

paintedorganza

Then, the afternoon was spent with the realtor and picking out paint for our smaller guest bedroom which we never painted. The flippers used some weird molding around the windows which we are restoring and then painting the walls a nice warm neutral.

I saw these red leaves in a driveway on our walk today. So pretty.

redleaves