last saturday night i had a little wet felting pARTy: i supplied a bunch of wool roving in lots of colors, i filled a couple bowls with hot & soapy water, and we rolled the wool into little balls until our fingertips were prune-y and hands were tired.

i also provided drift wood and wood embroidery hoops from which to hang the felted balls, and anna’s mom donated some really great antique wood hangers.

kristin gave a demonstration on how to make wool “beads”, which was a welcome respite from rolling wool into balls.

when our hands were tired of manipulating wool, we strung the balls and beads onto fishing line to create mobiles and wall hangings. we used crimp beads under each ball/bead to keep them in place on the line, and i also provided plastic & ceramic beads and hardware that could be used to provide added texture and balance.

if you’ve ever tried to photograph a mobile in the middle of the day when the air is still and the natural light is perfect, you know that it is difficult! my attempts at photographing everyone’s finished pieces under the light of a 75 watt bulb — late in the evening — were failures. i photographed my piece the next day (it’s the one at the top of this post), and i’ve given up on trying to adjust color/lighting on the photos i did take. instead, as my friends put their work online, i’ll link to them so you can see the great pieces they’ve created. jess posted her mobile on her blog already, which you really need to see!

here’s what i made at last saturday’s pARTy! i thought about modeling everything for you, but i’m feeling bloated this week.

an old black tank, sprayed with a bleach/water solution.

a tissue t, tie-dyed with orange dye. i’m wearing this one today!

two-tone t: i first dipped the whole t in grey dye. the t was originally white, and you should dampen fabric before putting in the dye to allow the dye to distribute on the fabric evenly. i forgot that part, so the grey is a bit uneven. after the grey, i dipped the bottom half into a bucket of denim blue.

scarves! anna did some research into good fabrics to use for scarves. she found us a hemp/cotton organic jersey from hemp traders via christina. it came in tube-form, which was perfect for a simple scarf that you can wrap around your neck 2-3 times. the scarf above was rolled and the ends dipped in orange and blue dye.

this scarf is simple — i just tossed it into the denim blue. after it was rinsed, washed, and dried, the edges faded a little. which i love.

and lastly, a giant scarf. it’s about 20 inches wide. i put it in red dye, and then dipped it in orange. after rinsing, i briefly dipped it in the wine/fuchsia bucket. it’s really vibrant for me, but i don’t own anything in a bright red… it’s about time i do.

anna suggested that the dyeing pARTy become an annual event, and i think it’s a fabulous idea! i’ll get a few more buckets so we can have more colors available at a time. we’ll all use industrial rubber gloves, to reduce waste and allow us to handle the hot dyes. i’m already looking forward to it!

happy weekend!

ps : there are more photos from last saturday up on the interwebs! anna wrote a post on acid wash t shirts, and one on tie dye, and rachel wrote a post about drawing with the bleach pens.

last saturday night i hosted a fabric manipulation pARTy. it was a ton of work, but completely worth it!

the main event of the night involved buckets and buckets of dye. i bought about 8 colors of rit dye, in both liquid and powder form. (fyi, liquid is definitely worth the extra dollar — the powdered dyes lost their punch really quickly.) i asked everyone to bring their own items to manipulate: there were t-shirts, dish towels, scarves, sheets, little girl’s dresses…

i had 2-3 buckets of dye going at a time. it was so fun watching the experiments… i had thought about printing out instructions on how to create effects when tie-dying, but everyone figured out really cool patterns on their own. and everyone shared their successes: what happens when you roll the fabric and just dip it? what happens when you don’t get the fabric wet before dying? what happens when you just fold the fabric and dip in the edges?

we also revisited the 80’s, and “acid washed” old t-shirts by spraying them with a bleach/water combo.

another fun thing we did was painting with bleach pens, à la amy karol’s bend the rules with fabric.

it was really neat to see how each fabric took the bleach: when used on denim, the bleach created white lines. but on black? we saw oranges, pinks, reds.

also happening inside: fabric painting using my stash of fabric paints from last summer’s fabric printing pARTy. a couple of my friends created stencils with contact paper and applied the paint with sponges. it helped to have a few projects going at a time, so if there weren’t dye buckets going with the colors one wanted, they could use the bleach pens or fabric paints.

i stopped taking photos once the sun went down. but we kept going. we dyed in the dark. we dyed while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. more photos of finished projects will come in the next few days!

on saturday evening i hosted a ceramic decoration pARTy, and it was so much fun! i supplied tiles and alcohol paints so we could make aimee’s drunken tiles, and i also had everyone bring ceramic goods that they could decorate with porcelain paint pens. a couple of people brought goods from ikea, and anna hit a 2nd hand shop down the street and picked up a bunch of good stuff to paint on for just $4.

my stuff is in the picture above: i drew orange, red, and blue circles on a large tile which i’ll use as a trivet; i drew canal houses (amsterdam) on one coffee cup, and dots on the other; and for the coasters, i punched the flower shape out of contact paper, adhered the contact paper to the tile, and then played with blending the alcohol inks.

kathryn brought a really great selection of ikea goods, and i love the simple flowers on these bowls. that square piece in the upper left corner of the photo? purchased as a toothbrush holder, kathryn turned a couple of them into flower vases, which you can see in the photo below:

a few weeks ago, jenn saw a tile set at a major retailer that had a design that carried through all 4 tiles — i knew there’d be a way we could do something similar, and thought we could try it with contact paper. jenn drew out the design, cut it out, painted over it, and when dry, peeled off the contact paper. it worked so well, kristin did a set, too:

the blue is so gorgeous!

anna drew ants on this planter — eeee!

here are more trivets made by jean, heather, and anna. it was really fun watching how the inks moved on the tiles, and how each drop of color dramatically changed the piece.

jenn used a paper punch with contact paper to decorate this canister, and then brushed on the inks.  i wanted to steal this from her!

coasters! jean and anna made these great coasters out of the smaller tiles. jean’s poppies are superb, and the color combos of the other tiles are so fabulous!

it was a really great evening, and i’ve only shown you half of the work everyone created. it’s so wonderful when my friends leave with their arms full of great pieces that they get to keep for themselves or gift them to special people. thank you for coming, girls!

summer giveaway update: thank you, all, for entering! i really enjoyed reading about what you’re looking forward to this summer! and now the winner: comment number 6, danielle. yay!

last friday night, i held a clay pARTy. i bought a giant block of white sculpey clay, and a few small chunks that were pre-colored. the original plan was to create little terrarium houses with the oven-bake clay, but we ended up making much more:

we made necklace pendants, and stamped letters and words into our creations.

we made beads, and cut out shapes with cookie cutters to make magnets and gift tags.

we drank wine.

and made little houses. these are anna’s. to get a ceramic/glaze look, we mixed water color pigment into a gloss medium. the color was a bit translucent, but really did help give our little sculpey creations the look of a porcelain piece. i completely forgot to make a mini version of my house, but i did make the pendant at the top of the post. it’s a bit egg-like, but it was the night before easter!

last saturday night, i hosted a small pARTy. we each made a stash of greeting cards: i provided the basic cardstock/envelope combinations, and a little inspiration, and then encouraged everyone to cut and paste using recycled materials. i think anna’s cards (above) had some of us thinking “why didn’t we think of that?!”. update: close-ups are posted on anna’s blog.

we decorated cards with pages from old art history books, with paper samples, with photos, with tea bag packets, with packaging materials… the paper was flying! we made great cards! unfortunately, i did not do a very good job with the photography.

lisa’s fabulous stash of cards

i wish that these photos had sharper focus so you could see how great they are. all detail was lost when trying to document kathryn and jackie’s amazing work. but maybe the lack of focus gives the photos a certain mystique?

it’s the detail of  jenn’s cards that really makes them cool, which you cannot see at all. update: she’s got some on her blog.

(nope. no mystique here — i need to learn how to shoot better with my new toy.)

some photos from last saturday night’s pARTy… the organizers took longer to make than i had thought they would, and we hit a snag when the envelopes sealed themselves when we pressed them while drying. but other than that, it was a successful evening! lots of wreaths found new homes, and a few journals will be under christmas trees this year.

lisa and steph came over saturday night for another round of glass work (here’s round one). we listened to xmas music, and i made a bunch of trees, but i just can’t find my xmas spirit yet. maybe it’s our 50-degree days: it’s just too warm in minnesota to be late november!

but lisa and steph did a great job of making xmas gifts. i can’t say enough how fun it is to have friends over and watch them make really cool stuff:

top row, left to right, by lisa: loving her truck nite lite, which we affectionately dubbed “the mystery machine”. the second photo is 3 triangle trees soldered together, which we made into a candle holder. and the last piece is a nite lite for a little one’s room — i love the curve…

bottom row, left to right: steph started with a lite, using a purple iridescent glass and beads. and look at her firetruck!  eeee! i love it! and her trees, a gift for her mom…

it was a great night!

jenn and lisa came over yesterday afternoon to make some books for holiday gifts.

the food: jenn brought butternut squash pizza. the recipe is here, oh dear god, it is so good. lisa brought enough crab dip to feed 12, and we did our best to eat 4 times our share. i made an apple cake, from this recipe from a friend to knit with via a friend in kansas (hi leslie!). we were too full of crab dip and pizza to dig into the cake, but i did eat a large piece of it after they left and i can tell you it is yummmy (extra m added on purpose).

the books: i pre-cut the book board, and i provided packages of 8×8 archival album refill pages from the martha stewart line available at michaels. jenn and lisa met for lunch last week and picked out their papers and book cloth at our local paper source. so all we needed to do yesterday was cut the paper, eat, glue, pour wine, and assemble.

it was a good way to spend a sunday afternoon.

at a recent outing, my friends lisa and steph both mentioned needing to buy nite lites for their little ones’s rooms. i barged into the conversation with “no! don’t buy one! come over to my house and make one!” long ago, we made nite lites at a pARTy, and i still have a ton of glass and all of the necessary supplies.

on saturday lisa & her almost 3-year old daughter and steph & her 16-month old son came over and we had a mini nite lite pARTy. you’d think that 2 little ones + hot soldering iron + sharp glass + little beads + a little tequila would equal disaster. but we did good and no one got hurt!

lisa used an opaque glass that has a pink iridescent layer on the front. i think her original idea was to make a diamond shape, but it ended up looking like a house, which i love. she decorated it with glass beads on loopy wire.

steph also used an opaque glass — this one with blues and greens swirled together. she topped it off with 2 ceramic beads and a sun charm on loopy wire.

there was talk of putting the finished lites in places other than the kid’s rooms… more can always be made!

i had a small pARTy last saturday afternoon, and we did some wet felting in the back yard. the number of attendees was small, and the amount of finished projects? even smaller. it turned out to be a beautiful day to be outside and chat, but not a great day for us to get a lot done.we did try, though!

heather wanted to try making a bowl. first, we placed roving around the outside of a bowl.

then we sprinkled it with hot, soapy water, and rubbed the fibers together with bubble wrap.

we added more roving, which adhered, but didn’t really felt. but i like the looks of the bowl. here it’s drying upside down. update from heather: it’s dry, but floppy. anyone have any good ideas? 

anna tried nuno felting: adding felt to silk. it was rough going, and involved a lot of bubble wrap friction.

here’s where anna left the scarf. i really liked how it was coming along, but it took a lot of work to get there.

i felted a couple of soaps. and heather and i felted a stone.i think wet felting is a tough one to do as a group. it takes a lot of work, and a lot of water, and on a nice day, it’s easy to get distracted. maybe once the weather cools down we’ll find the patience it takes to work with wool.

pARTy is going on the road! as you read this, i am driving to lawrence kansas, to bring pARTy to my friends jackie (smoothpebble), melinda (my purple crayon), and aimee (artsyville). i’m so excited!

the plan: arrive thursday night, find some wine. go for a run friday morning thru lawrence, see what it’s all about. maybe meet aimee for coffee/tea, then maybe a photo outing with jackie and melinda followed by dinner and wine. if we don’t drink too much wine, we’ll do some bookbinding (and maybe some screen printing!). then on saturday, aimee’s hosting a pARTy at her house and we’re going to make soap and lip balms. more wine! then i’ll drag my sorry ass out of bed and drive home on sunday.

while i’m not looking forward to driving thru the entire state of iowa, i know it will be worth it! i’ll have pictures for you next week… happy end of week!

oh, and welcome home to my little sis! she’s coming home today from her 9-month-long honeymoon/road trip around the states. and i won’t be home to greet her, cuz i’m finally getting outta here! welcome home.

i hosted a pARTy last friday, and we made refillable books!

they are pretty simple: front/back/spine boards covered with book cloth and decorative paper, half-moon envelopes on the inside covers, and 3 signatures of 8.5 x 11 paper secured inside with elastic cord (the signatures can be removed and replaced, giving the book a long life). i thought it’d be a great introduction to covering boards for bookmaking for the newbies, and a refresher for those that have been attending since day one. we had a slow start, since i wanted everyone to have the chance to pick their paper and book cloth combination: once decisions were made all of the pieces were individually hand-cut. but the assembly went pretty quickly, and wow, look at all of the beautiful books!

and we ate a lot of cheese!

(papers from snow & graham, eieio studio, paper source, and paper works)

last saturday i hosted our 6th annual xmas pARTy. we made christmas gifts, ate a ton of cheese and sugar (jenn brought cake and cupcakes!), and drank wine. it was a wonderful day.

the image above is just a sampling of the gifts that were made: jean and kathryn painted photos on blocks of wood, jackie made salt scrubs, jenn made some halfeaten gingerbread men (using elsie marley’s great tutorial),  i knitted a scarf, and kristen, anna, jackie, and kathryn decorated grono lights. so many handmade gifts, hooray!

mea culpa: i’ve taken the post down, out of respect for, and as an apology to, frazier & wing. our pARTy mobiles were created with a key aspect that is also used in the frazier & wing mobile, and while it was never our intention to outright copy, or claim the entire mobile design as original, it could be easily interpreted that way. i sincerely apologize.

my friend heather couldn’t make it to my printing pARTy, so last saturday i brought the pARTy to her. she printed a bunch of towels (all above) using leaves, freezer paper stencils, and a drafting template. they’re beautiful, and will be christmas presents, but i hope she keeps at least one for herself… her husband joined us and created a cool design and stenciled it onto a sweatshirt with freezer paper:

but the best project of the day? a shirt for her son. we had her son, who’s 2.5 oops, he’s 3.5 years old, draw on freezer paper. he drew a simple monster, which was pretty dang good for a kid his age. then he scribbled all over the paper. heather cut out the monster, and decided to cut out a scribble, too. we asked her son what color he wanted (green), and he even did a little printing:

(he’s mostly nekkid to avoid getting paint on his clothes.) we let it dry, and when we finally pulled off the freezer paper, we were amazed at how awesome it turned out. really. it rocks:

it’s my favorite printing project to date. bravo, my favorite little guy (and mom)!

last friday’s printing pARTy was so much fun! i only wish i had more space… it was tough for 7 of us to find room to spread out our projects, and deal with plates of fabric paint. but it was still fun! we ate lots of cheese. we drank wine. and we printed lots and lots of flour sack towels, a few tote bags, a t-shirt, a clothespin bag, fabric for curtains, and managed not to make accidental designs on the clothing we were wearing.

lots of pictures after the jump!

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tonight i’m hosting pARTy, and we’ll be printing on fabric. inspired by lotta prints, we’re going to create stencils using both acetate and freezer paper… we’re going to print with leaves… and i’ll have my carved linoleum blocks out for those that want to try block printing (we won’t be carving new ones, that’s for another night). i ordered hemp tote bags and picked up a bunch of flour sack towels from target, and some participants are bringing extra goodies like fabric for curtains and clothing that needs a second life. i’m really excited about all of the options, and i can’t wait to see what everyone makes! i’ll post our finished projects next week…

happy weekend!

click the image to enlarge

last friday the girls came over for pARTy, and we made the great pieces above by painting photos on blocks of wood. i think there was a little trepidation when i first described the project, but i couldn’t be more amazed by the final pieces!

each person picked out a few of their favorite photos (important: my friends are the original photographers of the photos — they have not stolen/borrowed anyone else’s), then i worked with them to figure out what highlights, lowlights, midtones, negative space, etc. to paint. there was also an option to add a secondary accent piece. anna has a great post with pictures that show more detail — check it out!

wanna make your own? a tutorial is after the jump, along with details of each piece! but first, check out all the cheese we sampled while creating:

ok, that’s it for me. my brain is already on vacation, so i’m taking the rest of the week off from blogging. have a great 4th of july weekend! click the link below for a painted photo tutorial.

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tonight i’m hosting pARTy, for the first time since february’s light pARTy. we try to do pARTy every other month, but it’s hard to schedule a night that works for all of us. we did take a field trip to birdie’s and learned how to dye wool in may, but it’s been 3 months since we’ve gathered at my house.

so we’re finally getting together tonight for cheese, wine, and art. i won’t reveal the entire project, but it involves cut boards, photos, and acrylics. i’ll post our work next week!

have a great weekend! i hope you are able to create, spend time with friends, and enjoy some wine.