Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Finally getting around to needlefelting

So while on vacation, I went around picking up various samples of roving (plus actual ounces of roving) to put into some kind of needlefelted wall hanging. I want to attempt to make my own version of tarot cards (well, someday...), without drawing, so I decided to try felting.

I don't have it photographed as yet (not done yet, plus it is taking me umpteen years to wade through my Photoshop pile), but I decided to do an alternate version of The Lovers card, with swans and a Eden-esque tree behind it and a snake. The felting of this went pretty well, and now I am trying to knit a backdrop for the whole thing to attach the items to.

My tower flag

This has been something I've been wanting to attempt to work on for quite awhile. (Yeah, still obsessed with the same image.) I wanted this to be the back wall centerpiece for my upcoming show. I was originally going to try fabric collage a la enchantedworld.com, but ran into some trouble when I couldn't really find any fabric in JoAnn's that was particularly collage-y other than the flames..

Though I do like how that part came out.

I thought it was coming out too flat and quilt-ish, so was trying to think of a way to liven it up. I did a 3-D stuffed tower, and painted gold lightning,  

But what else?

Then I thought of trying some felting. So I did more of a full needlefelt on the mirror (that came out great on the color) and the chaos butterflies and the tower decor, and did lighter felting jobs swirling the colors around on the big cloud.

  I layered the waves around fabric-wise and sewed fancy swirling stitches on the bottom, but it still seemed flat, 

So I added more swirls of felt to the bottom layer.

It's probably not the best work ever, but I'm fond of it.

Fun with felting

I found a DIY felt mandala section at Whole Earth this year. It was fun!

A rare couple of screenprints that don't suck

Worked on some shirts for an organization. Did not screw up too bad!

News from the CC

• When I signed up for a show, it was in spring 2011. Now it's been moved up to...summer 2010.

HOLY SHIT THAT'S A YEAR AND A HALF AWAY HOLY CRAP SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT THIS NOW?!

I think I am going to do a "chaos and change" theme, have a Persephone section, have a Tower/tarot section...that sort of thing. Oh, and Eris. Need to throw in some Eris.

I also need to work on something yarny for it, don't you think? Maybe something from all my areas of expertise. I've got glasswork, jewelry, and ceramics with a pomegranate theme, and some glass-ish stuff in Tower stuff, I think...

• Four days into signups, nobody is signed up for my class. Gee, I guess it wasn't as much of a hit as people thought.

That's a bummer, but on the other hand, it's not that big of a deal to me if it runs either. It gives me a free weekend, and technically it's not like I can get paid for it anyway.

• The classes I am signed up for this quarter have nobody but me in them.

That's not a good sign at all.

Okay, I got an idea...make my own "motley" yarn. Spin with any ol' random colors I get ahold of, mix them together at random. Then it doesn't matter if it doesn't match, and I can make as much as I want!

Weird Things Happen

I have wanted a shirt that says "Weird Things Happen" (this is how my life goes) for ages now. But since I'm a crap screenprinter, I talked my friend (later, her husband) into doing it. I also designed a logo for it, which she redesigned to be a bit bigger. So technically, all I really did on this shirt in the end was pick out the words for it.

Anyway, here's another pic of my b00bs on the Internet...

Indeed, weird things happened to this shirt in the making. I was using leftover supplies from these dark blue "Super CC" shirts (seen here), and figured "Eh, we can use yellow on it, that'll be fine." As it turned out, the yellow didn't show up much, so white got superimposed on top of it. I actually really like how funky different the layers of color look.

Attempting screenprinting again

A friend of mine came up with this cute bunny screenprint. I attempted to do a few myself. Uh, she had to do it after awhile. You can tell which ones are hers because they suck less!

Tie-dye workshop shirts

I'm happy with how 3 of the 4 came out. Gee, guess which one didn't come out so well.

The far left photo is a "scrunch", and I plan to make that into a skirt or something. I tried tying off little ends on the "Use Your Hands" shirt to make rosettes, which you can kind-of-but-not-really see. But the shirt came out pretty anyway, so I don't really care. And I love the spiral shirt.

I thought it was fun to learn how to make the star pattern, but it came out so unevenly on the dying that it's rather frustrating. I don't know what to do with it.

Three shirts.

Here's the medium-sized shirt. It came out the best of the lot, I think. Yeehaw.

The large-sized on the right is the first one I did, and the one where I discovered the hat wasn't printing all the way through. So I had to get a paintbrush and do some nitpicking on all of the hats. The medium one came out best- large is "just okay."

The extra-large...got some light purple smears on it. Sigh. Alas, that was the last extra-large size they sold, so I couldn't do it over.

But still...sellable? Perhaps?

This time I tried to print on fabric...

So, the good news is that after getting help from another volunteer at the CC (her print on the left, mine on the right), the printing process of the shirt is about squared away.

Alas, what can't be squared away is my own personal idiocy, as you can tell from the shirt I screenprinted below.

Bad enough it's upside down, yes, but I could have gotten away with that, given the subject matter. But upside down AND crooked...why yes, I am a moron!

*sigh* Teaches me to spend $16 on a shirt at the Gap just because I don't want to have a plain white shirt.

Anyhoo, I bought some cheap plain white shirts in different sizes yesterday to screenprint for sale. HOPEFULLY they will come out better than this one did.