Luna's Baublebilities

Here are some scarves that recently went out to a new home.  I'm trying to get the rest of the photographed and loaded into my shop - I'll do it - when I get a day when I don't have doctor's appointments with sick kids or visits to the accountant. 

Now I have to go get the house in order.   It's a shambles.
















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Last one!  Or first - depending on how you're approaching them.  These are new alchemy scarves - Tracy Bloom gets first pick but if you see something you like, I'll make some up for you, too.  You can order a single scarf here:

Alchemy Scarf - Custom Colors!

OR if you need more than 5, we can talk about a wholesale order for you.  I keep wishing I could make a matched set of these for a wedding party - as dress sashes or evening wraps.  Maybe someday!

O.K.  Here are the yellows and oranges!

 Blogger is giving me greif about posting all the photos I want to today.  I have an eye popping Daffodil yellow that was supposed to turn out as a soft gold but yellow is such an aggressive dye.  I will have to order  few more subtle base colors for mixing and experimenting with.  I have 2 of them in regular length.

Bronze/Gold is just what it says it is.  Regular length.  You can see it in the edge of the Citrus Orange photo.

Citrus Orange - very looong, very vibrant.

Peach - regular length, lots of variegation.

Ember - a nice, hot orange with heavy resist lines.


Lengths - Short is 1-1.5 yards
regular length is 2-2.5 yards
long is over 3 yards.  all Alchemy scarves are 36" wide and edged in shimmery Gold textile paint on the non-selvedge edges to prevent fraying

Blue Mist - a soft, silvery blue, some pink splashes from the grey under layer


Regatta - a nice, watery blue - not too green with a strong headwind


Sky Blue - Perfect for cloud gazing


Aquamarine - for all you mermaids.  One of these is regular length (2 - 2.5 yards) and one is shorter - about 1.5 yards...

Hmmm - Blogger doesn't like my photo of Aquamarine by itself so here they all are in order.







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Hyacinth, long and regular  Strangely, the long Hyacinth is has softer variegations in spite of the same treatment as the shorter - just like the Silver Peony in the last post. 

Crocus, regular and short

Cloud Cover - the closest I could come to a true silver.  It has pink splashes - all of the greys have some form of red or fuchsia in them and it's really hard to avoid speckling - especially since I don't blend my dyes mechanically.  I really prefer the magic of hand mixing.













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Garden - a soft, rich brown leaning toward orange with subtle variegation


Silver Peony - Loooong scarf flat and on a mannequin.  and a regular sized scarf flat and on a mannequin.  For some reason this one turned out very softly variegated while the regular size of this scarf dyed the same color, bunched the same way in the same baggie of dye as this one turned out with vibrant pink splashes.  It's Alchemy - go figure.




Coral Splash - pretty pink with speckled splashed of brighter coral.  Yummy.














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For Tracy - a series of posts with new colors to choose from. 

Tracy Bloom gets first pick, but if you all see something you can live without just let me know and I'll make it for you, too.

Sage green - flat and on a mannequin.  It is a very soft color and a very looooong scarf.



Underbrush - lots of gold. bronze and brown undertones



Poison Apple - shocking.  With subtle variegation along the resist lines.


















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I got a last minute Holiday Commission to make a hand beaded, hand dyed velvet scarf in sage green with rose accents. 

I wasn't really sure how it would come out, I don't usually work in "subdued", you know. 

But, Wow.  I hated to send it away so fast. 




















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So -

I am totally and completely overwhelmed right now. 

But things are good.  Or mostly good.  Just very, very busy and I am very, very disorganized and slothful.  So that = Overwhelmed.

Here is a gorgeous rainbow Adventure scarf.  The photo is not good.  That blue is really an intense cerulean and the purple there near the edge is capable of burning your retinas out in real life.  Think Lisa Frank rainbows and unicorns but with less glitter and more sheen and you'll be close.   This scarf and it's velvet twin are going to the Arts Council today along with a few teal blue scarves for your buy local, buy handmade gifting pleasure.  (If you are not local and absolutely must have one of these rainbow scarves NOW or you will DIE - send me an e-mail or contact me through Facebook or my ArtFire shop and if the scarf has not been sold in the gallery, I will retrieve it for you and ship it to you in time for Santa.)

(Again - don't let this blue fool you.  It is bright cerulean turquoise blue, not midnight blue and that dark plum - screaming royal purple.  Neither of our cameras will take a good shot of these scarves because there is too much color information and the poor little pixels get all confused about what hue they are supposed to be.)

here's another collection that landed my earrings on the FP of ArtFire and made my stats skyrocket again.  I wish I could hug EarthMotherMosaics!  Thank You!



Last but not least - here is the Genesis of what I think is going to eventually become a gorgeous piece of Art Cloth.  It is a bamboo/cotton blend that I scrunched almost to death, shoved tightly into a container and dumped some Teal Blue dye over.  I love that crackley kaleidescopic look of the dye patterns. 

Morita of Inspirational Beading has been doing a series of interview with other beaders on her blog and today she published an interview with me!  I'm so pleased.  She took the time to post some gorgeous photos of my work and she made me sound like an expert. 

Go take a look at her site - she posts regularly and has some very interesting things happening on her blog right now.

Remember the ugly scarves that went horribly wrong and didn't end up as magnificent anythings?

A few hours in an Imperial Purple dye vat fixed them right up.  There's  even some subtle variegation going on with some nice deep bluish tints in the middle of the swirls and a chocolate undertone around the edges of the swirls.  The overall color is a rich aubergine/royal purple - which gets lighter or deeper as the light moves around the scarf.

Sigh.  I love velvet!













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Ugh.  This was supposed to be a magnificent Peacock scarf.
Instead it is . . . something else.  Something else that is less than magnificent.

I don't know what happened.

Those dark blackish grey areas? Supposed to be deep, rich, warm brown.

The blue and purple are almost rich enough but there's very little definition and they just sort of . . . die as they merge with the brown.

It may be that I mixed too much ivory into my orchid dye - the transition point between the purple and brown.  But that doesn't explain why the brown migrated so little and the blue seems to dominate.  The Brown is supposed to dominate.  Sigh....

The overall effect was supposed to be more like this:

I will over-dye it tomorrow in a rich purple color and hope that will salvage it.

But using my new dye table was awesome.

There are still issues with lighting - in this case the halogen lights are very bright but also very hot. I'm a little concerned about how fast they may dry out silk painting projects - will I still get good salt effects?

I plan to find out tomorrow.

Here's my table with all of the tools moved off of it.  no - it's not glamorous but its a great height and length.  I don't have to dye on the floor anymore!


It is also not good yet for photographs.  I lit the area up and it looked good with my eye but once I got the photos on the computer it became obvious that I need some mode of diffusing the light and some other sources for front lighting. 





The halogens are great for back lighting but the ceiling lights paired with my little Ott light are just not quite bright enough to show colors well and I get lots of puddles of brightness surrounded by encroaching gloominess.

This one of a beaded necklace is O.K.









But the scarf photo is terrible.
















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