Luna's Baublebilities

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. 

I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.  This is the 3rd Sunday in October when I have felt lousy.  I'm going to end up on the 'watch list' for our branch - seriously.  I considered going to church today but since my throat hurts when I breathe, speak or swallow, I thought it would be kinder to everyone else to stay home and keep my coughing Maxx home, too.

Hopefully, my body will take advantage of the rest and I'll be back on my feet tomorrow.

I got to use my dye table for silk painting yesterday.   It was wonderful.  It still needs some tweaks - like a few pull out trays for balancing my dye tray on while painting and it would be nice to get the wall behind it painted so it doesn't look so much like a low budget garage but it is generally functional and it makes me happy.  The halogen lights do make the dye dry faster but not so fast that salt effects stop working - just fast enough that I can work a bit faster.  In the past I have always had to either leave the silk on the stretcher until teh dye dried or try to carefully remove the wet silk and hang it where nothing would touch it while it dried.   hat could take hours and I ruined a few scarves trying to move them.  Last night, scarves were dry within 10 minutes of completion.  Awesome.

I also unrolled my foam floor mat yesterday since I was on my feet all day at the dye table.  It also makes a real difference in how tired my legs get.  Now I just need to decide whether or not to secure it there and how.

You know what else is awesome?  Molly Bryn finally figured out that camera angle makes all the difference.  Change the angle - mom looses 20 pounds!  I don't know why everyone else usually wants to photograph my jowls.

Here are a few quick photos of things I've been working on recently


I got these wonderful bead caps a month or so ago and they just didn't work for any of the beads I have in stock.  Too shallow for my briolettes, too wide for any of my rounds, too small for some of the bigger beads I have . . .   But they make great tassel tops!

I've got another project in the works with coral beads and flaming red silk thread but that will have to wait a few more days.   Hand dyeing the silk thread was fun, too and I was a bit dismayed to discover how much thread I needed to use to make a fat enough tassel for thislittle bead cap.



And here are some alchemy scarves I did up as a custom wholesale order.  My customer wanted autumn colors so I dyed up some flaming warms, some thistley & plummy purples and some vibrant skies.  I'll be ironing and edging these later today and have them ready to ship tomorrow.  I've really been enjoying making this custom order, experimenting with new colors and combinations to capture some of the colors of autumn.  I'll post finished photos later this week so you can see the color shifts a little better, the wrinkling and crinkling  disguises the depth of color in each scarf.

Full moon scarfWhat a dreadful time we've had of it the last few weeks!  Back in October, I posted in my shops that I would be running a special - free shiping on orders over $30.00 - to make up for inconvenience caused by poky deliveries this fall.  I thought that my deliveries would be poky because of working so much over at the Beorningstead.

No sooner had I put up the free shipping offer than Maxx came down with h1n1.  Then I came down with it.  Then we both got better.   (HA!)    Then I developed an earache from purgatory, my head exploded and I've been unfit to drive or think or hear or talk or anything for a week and a half!  The worst part of it is that I've been so sick that I haven't even been able to work at projects - I'm just too darn dizzy.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to thread a beading needle wen the room won't stop tilting?

Anyway, I'm back to the doctor's today.  She says that the ear infection is a common complication of h1n1, I'm just worried about that fact that it didn't respond well to a course of antibiotics.

I did have a little productive time between the fever flu and the alien in my ear.  I finally finished off the scarves I had painted during summer fest.  They are set, highlighted and up in my Etsy shop right now.  I can't wait to get into my new studio where I will have a counter top just for painting silk scarves!

I also have been working on a custom order velvet scarf for a friend with a VERY lucky wife.  It is an incredible scarlet velvet with gold seed bead mesh with rich crimson goth roundelles at the bottom of each end.   I had lots of fun earlier this fall dyeing up a selection of velvets for him to choose from.  I'm only a little sad that he chose the scarlet.  I still have some purple and an incredible mallard teal to work with.

One of these days, I'll put up a tutorial for netted fringe.  It is one of my favorite things to do - it is a very simple and meditative process and usually goes pretty smoothly as long as one is careful not to get tangles in one's thread.  Ten inches of fringe usually takes me about 2 hours but the velvet is a bit trickier than a flat silk scarf would be, as the initial fringe stitch also acts as the finishing hem for the open ends of the scarf.   That requires a bit of extra time and care with pinning the edges and trying to take up the same amount of fabric on each side of the scarf with each stitch.  The first edge of this scarf took me about 3.5 hours.

You can see in this photo that I wasn't paying close enough attention to the spacing of my stitches on one side of the velvet.  This will have to come out as it makes the velvet drape poorly.  I'm very glad I caught it before I got too far along the edge!

If you love the scarf, I do have another one in sapphire blue over in my shop or I could order up some more velvet and make you any color you want!

I have a fun handmade gift project I hope to post in the next few days as well as show off the necklace I made with a beautiful Mary Harding pendant during the Beading party at the arts council.

Here are some photos of the scarves that I finished last week and a short how-to on stamp making.


Making a stamp for silk resist is very easy and requires only an idea, a piece of plexiglass, a plexiglass cutter (both should be available at your local hardware store), a sheet of fun foam and some glue - I use either super glue or rubber cement.

Your design should be fairly simple and read well as either positive or negative space. Transfer your design to the fun foam and cut it out with scissors. Scissors will create a smooth beveled edge that works well for gluing and stamping. If you have multiple shapes within your design, it is a good idea to draw a map of pieces onto your plexiglass with a sharpie marker so that you know where each small element is supposed to go once you start gluing. Use the plexiglass cutter to cut the plastic to the appropriate size for your stamp.

If you use super glue, apply tiny dots of glue at 1/8 inch intervals to the back of the fun foam and quickly stick the pieces onto the plexiglass. These should stick for just about forever. Try not to get your fingers too involved, you don't want to wear your new stamp all day.

Rubber cement allows for some adjustments after placement and is good for the accident prone. Apply a thin layer of glue to the plexiglass and to the fun foam. Allow it to dry until it is tacky on both surfaces and then press the foam pieces frimly onto the plexiglass. Lay the assembled stamp flat and place a heavy book on top for about an hour. This results in a sturdy stamp that can be removed in case you want to re-position the pieces or use the piece of plexiglass for something else.

Where to get a design motif?

Sometimes my design ideas come from my own drawings, sometimes they come from other design sources.

These carnation blossoms are two of my favorite stamps.


They are from a small study of carnation buds and blossoms I did about 8 years ago.
















I found the spear-like buds very intriguing so I made a stamp of that simple design and used it for a couple of years. then I wanted to add some variety to the designs I was stamping with that motif and created the blossom stamp to co-ordinate with it. They have ben very successful. I can create rigid, static upright motifs with these stamps or use them as a garden element, adding fern patterns, birds, insects or my signature moon stamp.



These fuschia blossoms were created in a similar fashion. I did a quick setch of a friend's hanging basket and later translated that into a set of fuschia blossom and bud stamps. These ae wonderful bcause in order to make the design read corectly, I stamp the flowers on, allow them to dry and then draw in stems and leaves with my fine line applicatr after the scarf is in the stretcher frame. This creates a scarf that can be painted in a groovy, 1970's stained glass window look.

The swallow image originated from a one of Graham Leslie McCallum's source books. I like these books because they are full of simple B&W line drawings of relatively simple design motifs. I like other souce books, too, but I find that I am often distracted & overwhelmed by the addition of colors or including complete designs on the page instead of simple elements.













I made the first stamp from a line drawing inspired by two or three of the swallow images in the book. I wanted another swallow, slightly larger and swooping in the opposite direction, so I simply traced the first foam swallow onto another piece of foam before gluing it to the plexiglass.

You can also get nice stamps at Michaels' and other shops that sell foam home decor and kid's craft stamps.
One your stamps are made, use a foam brush to apply Elmers School Glue Gel, diluted 2 to 1 with water and stamp the designs on the silk. Allow the resist to dry, stretch the silk and paint. Do not paint over the resisted image, as the glue is water soluble and will break down.

When the scarf is painted, cured and washed, you can embellish the resist design with textile paint or ink. I like Dahler Rowney's Acrylic inks - they are supple and shimmering and flow nicely onto the silk.

Wash the stamp with warm water after each use and allow to dry before storing it away and it will last for many years. You can also use the stamp for paper creations, for stamping paint or thickened inks to fabric or even for home decor.

So, I still have plenty of special commission scarves to finish this spring and I've been experiencing some challenges getting to them. I've been experiencing challenges getting to everything, lately!

I have, simply and irrevocably, outgrown my studio. The place is a mess. Yards of fabric are folded and heaped on top of the fabric bins that are too full to hold them, the fabric bins perch atop one another in front of the shelves that are too full to hold more bins. Bead jars containing saleable beads and project beads are scattered across every flat surface in the room. Water jugs, dyes and chemical bottles compete for space on the uppermost shelves. Used studio towels litter the floor, a massive box of Uline paded envelopes lurks under the table - Ziggy is quite put out at this intrusion - and inventory that needs to be photograped, stored, posted in my shops and generally managed is scattered everywhere.

I am losing my mind.

But the good news is that we are moving to a new home soon - assuming that we can make the bank happy enough to give us a very small mortgage. Our new home will have a new studio. Twice as big as the one I'm working in now. With running water.

Let me say that again - my new studio will have running water. Running water uncontaminated by cow poop. I cannot begin to tell you how happy this prospect makes me.

I will have separate, dedicated work spaces within the room which means that I will be able to leave a scarf drying on a frame on the dyeing table and move immediately to a sewing or beading project at the dry table. I will be able to mix my dyes and clean my tools in the same space that I am working in - no more running up and downstairs with buckets and jugs of water or trying to wrangle stretcher frames and chemicals all around the house! No more 7 hour days trying to dye devore scarves on my hands and knees on the livingroom floor before the holiday season. I will have little shelves to house all of my bead canisters on so that I can see al of my beads at once and find what I need without picking each canister up individually and peering in to determine the contents.

Here are photos of two new scarves I painted yesterday. I recently made two new swallow resist stamps - featured in these scarves. They are backlit but you can still see the designs pretty well. I'll post a stamp making how-to in a few days.

Now on to housecleaning, scarf curing, and class prep!

What a week we had last week! Bry has been working on taping the ceiling panels in our livingroom (remember that living room makeover we started last spring break?) and I've been working on scarves and inventory updates and we've both been cleaning up after a sick kid so the house is in serious disarray this morning.






I hope to get the living room clean and tidy, the laundry folded and maybe put away, Maxx's toddler toys cleaned out of his room so some of his bigger boy toys can go in, get the dishes washed and the kitchen cleaned up as well as spend at least half an hour with the treadmill, keep the fire burning and keep Molly on task with homeschool.

I'm not ambitious at all today.



But first I wanted to show off my new scarves and show you who I found lurking in the lair when I cleaned my studio a couple of weeks ago.








Here are some photos of my new scarves - they are already on their way to their new owners.







I'm in love with the purple moon scarf. I need to get my stretcher back out later this week and experiment with those funky color combinations some more.










These are among my simpler dragons and certainly are not my best ever but they are cute.

The Phoenix is wonderful. It was an exciting design challenge and I had fun blending the colors and creating the plumage. I've listed them all over at GoblinsMarket. They are not getting the attention they deserve hiding away in the mess of my studio.






I haven't worked with polymer clay for a while so these are probably over a year old. I'm torn about working with polymer anymore. I really like making dragons - I love the intricacy that I can develop with color and embellishments and I am addicted to all things fairy tale. BUT - the last time I worked with the clay, I had some very troubling reactions. . . . . .

It had been a few years since I had had time and inclination to get the stuff out - mostly because my old pasta machine was shot - it just took too long to condition the clay and get a good color blend with the old machine. There was a sale on PM's at Joanne Fabric on day so I rushed out to grab a new one and got my clay out again. I made lots of dragons and some mokumo game beads over the course of a couple of weeks and then my hormones hit me. PMS was terrifying that month - I was an emotional wreck (worse than my usual wreckage) weeping and then raging uncontrollably, close to suicidal a couple of times, horribly painful breasts and the night before my cycle began, I had bouts of shaking, chills and sweating. I was seriously considering a trip to the ER.

After decompressing for a few days, I realized that my horible hormones were probably a reaction to contact with the polymer clay. I bought some hand lotion that forms a barrier on your skin to prevent absorption of chemicals. The next month PMS was bad, but not as bad as the previous month. I quit using the Polymer Clay and my system stabilized to its normal level of insanity after a few cycles. I haven't worked with the clay since and can't decide on what course of action to take.

Do I use up what I have left? Do I chuck it all out? Do I try to continue to work with the stuff wearing gloves as much as possible? I was very frustrated to have developed a profitable and fulfilling new product line (dragons) only to discover thatthe process makes me sick. And I'm in a quandry about supporting an art form that obviously has serious health and likely environmental implications. Polymer Clay advocates and manufacturers insist that the stuff is safe, it cannot case cancer or other disease and is manufactured in an environmentally sound manner.

Really? Who do I trust? My body or those who make money selling me the stuff? How closely linked is my early Ploymer Clay use to my secondary infertility and endometriosis problems?

I will never know.

What I do know is that I have these beautiful things sitting around and stuff to make more ofthem and I don't know what to do with it all.