Dye day with girl friends

I spent the better part of yesterday at the library with girlfriends.  These pieces were all done with a gelli plate, stencils and thickened dyes.  Good first layer.  Looking forward to another dye layer and then some stitching.

girls day out

A day trip to Iowa City is always fun.  One way to make it even better is to go with girl friends!  We found an awesome mural that all of us admired!

Vigeland / I love Oslo!

I have been looking thru old pics this morning and re-enjoyed my trip to Oslo last summer with my sister.  We both had a great time at Vigeland:

Shopping with jes

We spent the morning doing errands and working on his to do list. I tried to see, really see, as we moved from place to place.

More pounding...

I had taken my coffee sun print and added some indigo leaves.  Now I am inspired to pound more flowers into this piece.

I think this is a variety of moss rose.  I grew as a potted plant this year. 

It pounded well, but will the colour last or turn brown... time will tell.

I had one little orange moss rose blooming. It is pounded on a test fabric.

The center is a stencil with acrylic paint. 

I used an old napkin for this little project. I see lots of opportunity for more pounding!

Indigo / pounding away...

After my disappointing adventure in indigo last year, I was ready to throw in the towel.  I couldn't find the seeds that I had saved to plant this spring.  My little voice said to just give it up.  The indigo thought different.  It came up on it's own:

I have been playing with pounding the leaves and must say, I am happy with the results!

cement play

My early mornings in the greenhouse turned cement workshop, are finally starting to turn into a real project.  I saw some silk flowers coated with cement and just had to try it myself.  After figuring out some obstacles (water resistant flowers, for one), the fun has begun.  One of those, not as easy as it looks projects...

I found that soaking the flowers overnight helped the first layer of cement to stick.

Hang to dry:

Adding more layers of cement.  It needs more and some leaves:

Using the sun: coffee prints

I read on someone's blog about a method of dyeing fabric using coffee and the sun.  A perfect combination!

Make a mixture of: 1 cup hot water, 2 T instant coffee, and 2 tsp alum.  Put in a spray bottle.

After wetting your fabric with water, place on a piece of cardboard covered with freezer paper or plastic.  Arrange leaves.  I used quarters to hold the leaves in place as it was breezy outside.  Spray the fabric with the coffee mixture.  Leave out in the sun until dry.  For me it was about 30 minutes.  Heat set with an iron and wash.  Easy and fun!!!

Inkodye wren bag

As long as there is inkodye left in the bottle, I will keep making prints! 

Sunny day = inkodye

I came across a bottle of Inkodye in my stash.  It's rather old and I read that you must use the bottle within a month of opening it.  Wrong...  It still works and I my goal is to sun print until the bottle is gone!