Luna's Baublebilities

Well, Studio Tour was a bit of a bust.  Which is O.K.  I was still feeling pretty worn out on Saturday and had several coughing fits triggered by trying to speak - the few people who did stop in mostly got to hear me cough.

The up side - we got the house clean.  My mom is a hero.  She has got the same miserable virus that I have been fighting off for a week but she came by on Friday to help me get the mess under control.  My studio looked pretty good in spite of obviously being under construction. 

I got lots of scarves dyed last week and my studio is now in working order so production from here on out should be easier and more fulfilling.  I have a tentative wholesale order for Alchemy scarves - once that customer chooses her colors, I will post the remaining ones up in my shop.  I'm still having lots of trouble photographing velvet scarves.  I might actually have to set up a light tent.

Oh - and today starts my Supply Sale.  From today until the end of the month, all supplies in my Goblins Market shop will be 15% off.  Use the coupon code THANKSGIVING SUPPLIES at checkout.  I'll be adding lots of bead kits and mixes during this time frame for those who want to make handmade gifts for Christmas.  I'll even gift wrap your supplies if you request it - I know lots of people who think beads are awesome things to find in your stocking!

Studio Tour is coming! 

I have approximately 6 working days to get ready.  With a beading party thrown in this Friday.  And a Halloween costume to make tonight.

The house is a disaster.  I have two weeks of laundry piled hither and tither.  (A washing machine is coming today!  But not a drier - we need to make sure that we can afford all the other critical construction materials before we buy a drier.)

What was I thinking?

I feel a bit like Kermit the Frog backstage as the show is falling apart.  Aaaaahh!   The Muppets always manage to pull it off, will I?

Time to go clean a spot for said washer, prime the bathroom, make some more sparklies and dye some more silk.  Oh - but first I have to wash the dishes because I can't get to my blasted studio sink because my teenager seems to be completely incapable of washing a dish. 

Cue manic screaming and and flapping of arms.

First let me make a ritual apology for my pitiful offering of Halloween photos.

I only have three from Halloween because of the stupid Energizer Bunny. I'm not sure if it was the batch of new Energizer batteries I had or if my charger had gone awry or what, but I was only able to take two to three photos at a time with both of my sets of batteries before they would die. I totally missed getting photos of Molly's great Gypsy(?) costume that she created. It was a strange hybrid of Tia Dalma, Captain Jack Sparrow and the traditional Gypsy thing. She looked prety wild and she decorated the back entry way with draped silk, candles, incense and sundry small eclectica to make the place look a little mysterious. We hung a sign out front that said "Treats, Fortunes, Destiny" with an arrow pointing to the back door. It sort of freaked out her 5 trick-or-treaters, which is what she was trying for.

After Halloween, Bry went out and bought me some Duracell rechargeables and a new charger so I'm happily back to getting hundreds of shots in before the juice runs out. Hooray!

So - here are photos of Maxx scooping out his pumpkin and in his Halloween costume. He would not communicate with me about what he wanted to dress up as this year so when I was out shopping, I picked up a Robin Hood costume. It looked quick, easy, cheap and involved a sword. I got home, made the costume and he refused to wear it. "I want to be a Pirate!" he said. Great time to tell me, kid. You can be a Pirate next year.

As you can see from the photos, he was sullen about the whole thing until after the third or fourth house when he realized that the costume magically enabled him to get candy from all the neighbors. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a photo of the big smiles upon his return home. Curse you, Energizer Bunny!









Here are photos of the classroom at the Arts Council where I set out my wares for Studio Tour. Another ritual apology here - it is pretty durn tricky to get a good photo of all these satin and velvet scarves. The photos just can't convey how lovely these scarves are. I love it when people walk into my "booth" and say "Oooooh! How beautiful!" or "Wow! This is so colorful!" It makes the backache from dyeing, washing, detangling and ironing completely worthwhile.











This is my favorite scarf of the season. The photo can only give a hint to how incredible these colors are together on velvet! It was a bit of a longshot to put these colors together because browns are often very chancy on silk.

Since these fiber reactive dyes are created for use on cellulite fibers, the ultimate outcome of any given color on silk, a proitein fiber, is unknown. Browns are created using some mix of at least three primaries so they tend to shift much more than a primary or secondary color will and the shifts are more unpredictable. Most browns I have used end up looking muddy or sallow and not beautiful at all.

But Molly and I desperately wanted to try a Peacock color scheme for this pattern. We debated for a few days, studying peacock feathers in various lights and we agreed that the most important thing was to get a good, rich brown with at least two shimmering purples and a brilliant teal/blue. Peacock feathers actually have a predominant green flash but I didn't want to risk putting brown, green, purple and blue all in the same scarf. Plus, scarves that are predominantly green simply do not sell. I decided to try 4 colors - a brown, a purple, a specially mixed pale orchid and a specially mixed blue/teal. It was an astounding success. I'm ordering more of this design today so I can make a few more of them for Etsy and my other galleries. And, I'll be honest, one for myself.

Now I have to run and get some long neglected housework and budgeting chores done. Velvet silk painting tutorial coming toorrow or Wednesday!

Every year this happens to me - or rather I allow it to happen to me. Studio Tour comes rushing up over my horizon and I panic because I'm not ready. I have an entire year to get ready for it but I never seem to be able to get it together. I'm like a last minute Christmas shopper or a 7:00 am Easter Bunny. Not quite enough time to get it all done well.

So. I'm unplugging the internet this morning and NOT plugging it back in until I'm completely packed and ready. Next week you'll get to see my tutorial on dyeing scarves. Plus photos of Maxx in his Halloween costume that I spent a whole day making only to have him argue about wearing it. Plus photos of Molly's Fortune Teller/Candy booth she set up in our entry way for Trick or Treaters - all 5 of them.

I will also be adding new inventory to both of my online shops next week - scarves, new colors of silk ribbon and cord, new filigree findings, new earrings and jewelry kits, silk fusion kits . . .

Now I have to go rinse out some scarves, see how many of them I've ruined - only two bad eggs so far - dye a few more this morning, make tags for everything,print business cards, make signage for my displays, decide what supplies are going with me, edge some new alchemy scarves, prepare my neckerchiefs and silk painting demo tools and try to finish a beading project or two before Friday morning. Whew!

Come see me at the Arts Council. It will be fun. Radmilla Zuman will also be there - she makes amazing lace work. Hilary will have some of her bead work there and we have an incredible gallery show of Valerie Patterson's wonderful paintings.

While you are at it - go see the rest of the artists participating in Studio Tour. Gas prices are lowish! Christmas is coming! Real Artists will show you haw they make art! Go here for a brochure.

This fall I have been very busy getting ready for the St. Lawrence County Arts Council's annual studio tour. This is an opportunity for people to visit artists in their own studios or as guests at other studio locations and watch artists create, see their recent work and possibly purchase work directly from the artist. I like to have lots of new scarves and jewelry items on hand for Studio Tour weekend because it falls so close to the holiday gifting season. If you are interested in the concept of Studio Tours or if you live in or near St. Lawrence County, NY, check out the SLC Arts Council's website.

In the previous years, I spent the autumn painting lots of silk scarves, but my 3 year old was just way too interested in the whole silk stretching and painting process for me to be successful with painting so my daughter and I painted some beautiful satin and velvet devore scarves this year instead. We discovered that with proper preparation, we could get 6 to 8 scarves painted during a single naptime! I will post pictures of some of these scarves in a few days.

I have also joined a complex cloth round robin through the Yahoo Complex Cloth discussion group. The idea behind this project is for each participant to dye or otherwise decorate one yard of cotton fabric, send it to the next person and alter the yard of fabric they get from the person before them on the list. This group has 7 participants per group, so sometime in the next 7 or 8 months I will get my original fabric back. You can read more about this process by visiting the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/complexcloth/ The blue fabric at the top of the page is the yard I sent out into the world to be altered.

I've also been working with some new jewelry techniques including some encrusted medallion beadwork inspired by Marcia DeCoster's article in Beadwork this summer and some unusual wireworked earrings. As soon as I learn how to post multiple photos in a blog in a way that makes sense, I will include photos of those, too. For now, bedtime draws near and I believe that some Dr. Seuss is in order.