RedBarn Studios

a couple of weeks ago i teased you with a sneak peak at a journal i made for a friend.

nancy cook had the brilliant idea of bartering our creativity!   she would give me a pile of neutral hand dyed fabrics for my nancy crow class but, in lieu of a monetary payment, i would pay in kind.

nancy is a fiber artist who creates beautiful pieces that showcases nature through painted and stitched botanical illustrations.   from this knowledge i created a journal specially for her.

for the cover i used a piece of my hand dyed fabric that overflows with different greens, golds and bluish greens to convey her passion for nature.   i then machine quilted swirling leaves all over to represent the sometimes  lyrical botanical illustrations in her work, and painted them with a burnished gold Lumiere.

i needed to keep any embellishments simple so, after much deliberation, i decided to use an almost transparent, shimmery organza ribbon to edge the journal both front and back.

uPDate: i originally used the ribbon as a tie closure but removed it because i felt the ribbon was too thin and would not hold up over time.    instead i covered a button with some of the same hand dyed fabric and added an elastic loop that i painted with Lumiere paints to match.

the journal is chock full of 144 pages that includes 24lb text weight paper, watercolour paper, recycled brown paper and even some graph paper all contained in 4 fat signatures.   each signature is sewn individually to the cover using pearl cotton thread i hand dyed to match the cover.

i constructed an envelope, attached at the back of the journal, as a convenient place to keep slips of notes and other ephemera she might collect.

when i got it finished i wanted her to see the complete finished journal first and, now that it’s been presented to her (with a lovely squeal of pleasure from her i might add), i can show it off to you.

i’ve been working hard on creating more journals that i’ll be putting up on my now empty etsy shop (sad sad state of affairs i know) but will posting about them here first. Check my website to see all the journals I’ve made and find one just for you.

Toodles,

Tags: commissions, hand dyed, journals, paper art // 1 Comment »

It seems such a long point till this time and this post.   we all go thru hectic, busy times but it seemed that I just could not gather the oomph for a long while to write any post, far less about art and, i must admit, it was starting to get to me.   with a boost from my friend nancy a couple of nights ago, here’s an update on life.
small yippee!

one of the things that has happened recently is my daughter’s transition into college.

oh my what a transition!   but I was so very surprised at the extent that this event would affect me. i can honestly say that the last few weeks adjusting to her not being at home has been one of the hardest things i have had to endure.

i hear from friends who’ve experienced this already that it is far from being over but i feel i am coming out the other side (ehh).   still tearing up when certain memories creep in or thoughts about our daily life that’s now different hits me. A new normal i have to learn to adjust to.

the crew

before we hit the road that friday i asked a neighbor to help us commemorate the day.   the sillyness in this picture is so telling about us as a family.   did NOT know, however, that hubby had fingers behind my head as well!!!  also notice  college student’s tongue sticking out. .   the other 2 were totally oblivious to what was going on. Ha!

car packed to the tip top

should have been a sluggish car ride cause car was totally packed with no room to move.   believe it or not connor was sitting right behind cheney in this shot..poor thing.

her place of residence for the next 4 yrs…

cheney is adjusting well to life as a college student.   just like she did when she was home, she checks in with me almost every day by phone…funnily enough, it’s the same time she did before…right after classes finish for the day.

one of the good things we’ve taken advantage of is getting her a camera for her pc so we can skype with her (another one of those words like “google” that’s turned into a verb).

it’s strange being in this big house with only 3 of us here now…fells like a cavern sometimes, especially when hubby is away on business and just 2 of us are here.

my only question to my mother after having experienced this all-consuming wave of emotion is why didn’t she ever tell me I would feel like this.  in her wise Mavis voice , she said there would be no way to describe what would happen but knew when it did, that she would be there for me when i needed her.

WoW! and the baton has been passed on.

Tags: family, this 'n that // 5 Comments »

here’s a sneak peek at a new journal i just finished.

some background
a friend helped me out recently and i wanted to pay her for her kindness.    she told me that in lieu of a monetary payment she wanted instead payment in kind, deciding that she’d like me to make her one of my journals.

i loved this idea! a little bartering of art and each person goes away smiling.

so after i got back from the Nancy Crow workshop a couple weeks ago i started creating, keeping my friend in mind.

she has no idea what it looks like and i get to surprise her with it soon.   now you know why the sneak peek.   i’ll reveal a pic of the completed journal after i present it to her.

Tags: journals, mixed media, paper art // 3 Comments »

hubby’s birthday is today.

every year it’s a milestone for him cause he finally turns the same age as me.

for 8 months out of the year he gets to call himself a “younger” man….then August rolls around and his ship has sunk. Poor thing seems to get all caught up in that age thing the older he gets.

as for me, I am loving where I am…..don’t take no crap from anyone anymore, do what’s best for me so that I can do whats best for others around me and am just all around enjoying my actual age….who knew!

need to get him to loosen up bout the number thing but until then….

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE!!!

may you have many, many more to come (even tho it upsets you just a wee bit..hee hee)

Tags: family // 2 Comments »

this past Monday i hosted my 5th Annual Dye Day but didn’t dye any of my own fabrics…i was so caught up in seeing what everyone else was doing.    on Tuesday though, the itch to get my fingers in some dye couldn’t be stopped. I decided to try a new thing for me.

about 3 months ago i made a large portable flat top for surface design.   i spread my soda ashed soaked fab and painted on the dye…usually I scrunch in a container and squirt dye over it.

i LOVE how these new pieces came out!!! I call this one the Melody FAb cause this is just the type of fab she creates.

the Melody FAb

i know you’re supposed to work to get the bubbles out but look at the magic my bubbles produced… SPLENDID indeed!

Melody FAb detail

this one looks like beautiful stonework or a piece of granite…mmmh.   this was the one that started the itch….I sat up in bed on Monday eve and thought, what if I diluted black and havana brown.  can you believe those were the only 2 colours i used here?

stonework

the 2nd piece i painted was one of the gradation fabs I did for Nancy Crow workshop, originally golden yellow, it got messed up in the wash with green splotches so i saved it for the overdye pile.

forest fire

below is the 3rd piece I painted….lots of cerulean blue, sky blue, black and the last of the chatruese dye….a perfect storm.

storm

Doesn’t this next one look like an over saturated pic of an x-ray of teeth?   this was another that needed to be overdyed so i pleated and scrunched it then squirted (back to regular programing) 2 colours on it still managing to keep some of the original yellow colour.   this’ll be an interesting piece to use in my work.

teeth

so here’s who came over to play on Monday…

Michele (rinsing fabs)…

DeLane (on right mxing dyes)…

Susan (all geared up for play)…

& PJ (our resident newbie)

It were fun!
(Mummy please don’t mind the language).

Tags: hand dyed, hand dyeing, pandoras, surface design // 6 Comments »

i took pics of all the fabs i dyed last week and had all intentions of working on getting them posted in the wee hours when we were on our trip this past week. yeh, right….the best laid plans and all.  so Sat night before doing anything else i cropped and labeled them all, ready for posting yesterday.

but….best laid plans came into play again cause my mOjo somehow reappeared and ya know we gotta work when the muse hits.

so with out further ado here’s the results of my in the zone dye day, yippee!

don’t ya just love the gradation thing going on????

see the three yellow ones on the top…i actually did a 5 gradation run of  Dharma golden yellow  but this time, boo hoo.  because i did so many fabs i tried rinsing them all in the same wash in the machine (i usually separate the lighter colours).  ix-nay on that one and i should have known better.

splotchy won’t do for NC’s workshop so i’ll either over dye it or do some screen printing.  as a matter of fact, a bit of both might be in order.

the drudgery of ironing
when have lots of fabric to iron i set up my ironing board with my large studio board on it in front of my bed with the board at a comfortable ironing height and then have at it.  i figure there’s no sense in standing and shifting from foot to foot…sitting and ironing can only be a good thing…you guys should try it.

anyway that’s how I got these pics.  was trying to get a good angle on all the newly dyed fabrics all in a row and couldn’t, so tried a spiral.  love it!!!

gradations came out fairly evenly from one fab to the next.

remember this:

here’s the shirt that resulted….and i’ve worn it already i might add…..ha!

when i first brought the fabrics upstairs to begin ironing i just dumped them on my bed. Connor came in and, seeing a chance to play, dived right in throwing the fabrics everywhere.  had to get my camera for this one.

see the how excited he gets with newly dyed fabrics? Not!

my cutey pie

toodles,

Tags: hand dyed, hand dyeing, hand dyes, monday posts, pic of day // 10 Comments »

slowly but surely my need to create is returning and about darn time i say!  as i sat a my table this morning i glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a drawing that had been on my wall seems like ages.  it always mocked me every time i looked at it…“hey Grace…what ya waiting for girly girl…miz arteest….seems really you cannot finish me…nananananana“.

i heard the relentless taunting and, for the most part, chose to ignore it every time.  just couldn’t put my finger on what the sketch needed and why it wasn’t working.  but today i tamed the mish-mosh beast.

any thoughts?

what i think is that i was trying to include too many different designs in the one piece…ugg!…..simplify girl,  so i took it down…put it back on my light box to redraw the base, reworked the design and came away with 2 new drawings. nice! and of course they are circles…you can always find them in my work.

next step is to recolour both new drawings in PSE8 altho patience will not be with me as i try this.  i’m on a Mac now and have  a much older version of CorelDraw that i got for my old PC,  but didn’t want to purchase another copy of the software…funds are tight.

I asked around on one of the lists i belong to and someone suggested these incredibly inexpensive vector based programs, Intaglio and EasyDraw, both made for Macs. mmmh….(if anyone has used either of these, let me now how you like it).  sometimes a girl just wants to colour the point and click way.

before I got my mOjo back today (oh yeh) i forced myself to go into the studio, not to do anything mind you…just spend 10 or so minutes reacquainting myself with being there.  before long, i couldn’t help myself (she says with a giggle)…..i created….i started another grunge journal.  here’s the first one I made.

inside cover….stitched from front then painted in and grunged..the best part

love this new-for-me way of attaching the spine.  as always—-filled with lots of wonderful paper to write/draw on, some really cool bits and, of course inspirational thoughts & ideas throughout to get the muse juices flowing.

i’m calling her lillibird…..my first painted photgraph

i still have some more stuff” to add and will sew in the signatures and put the finishing touches on it tonight.  as soon it’s completed i will be making a video clip showcasing both journals so you can get an up close view my step into the grunge…dun…dun…dun!

Tags: fiber art, journals, mixed media // 1 Comment »

my friend susan called me out on the fact that i left that teaser in my last post with no pics of the results, hee hee.  truth was i was so darned tired from being in a hot garage all day saturday that I couldn’t contemplate being out there on sunday as well.

besides…it was father’s day!

so here’s a pic of a stash of fabs I did last year to satisfy any withdrawal symptoms you might be experiencing and me begging forgiveness

YOWZA  YOWZA  YOWZA!

(p.s…..it wasn’t planned that melly testa‘s book would be in the pics
just how it happened folks cause that book is a must have!)

today’s update:
…rinsed out fabs & shirt
…hung on rack to dry
…about to be ironed & photographed
…result: gorgeous new yummy fabric in my stash
…did a batch more today as well.

On a flipping roll I am!

toodles,

Tags: hand dyed, hand dyeing, hand dyes // 1 Comment »

ever since I discovered i could dye my own fabrics i kinda get into a zone when i actually get to do it. it’s been such a long while since i did anything creative and it felt sooooo good to get my hands into the dye pots again.

this time i’m dyeing fabrics for my class with Nancy Crow and, as most of you probably know, she requires A LOT of yardage in all colourways, shades and tints for her workshops.

I usually dye fabric the Anne Johnston way…..piling 3 pieces of fabric in a large jar using 3 different dyes on each layer (see above). i love the way these fabrics turn out, sort a serendipitous adventure.

this time, however,  i need tints and shades of each colour….and that means gradation dyeing that i haven’t done since i started dyeing years ago. instead of using baggies with lots of water, I utilized a low water immersion technique (thinking green here) and small plastic containers.

the process

…made up a 1 cup solution of dye for each colour

…poured 1/2 cup of it into a measuring cup

…dribbled that over one of the 1/2 yd pieces of soda-ash soaked cloth

…manipulated it with my gloved hands so all the cloth is coloured. I then

…topped off the remaining dye solution with a 1/2 cup of water

…mixed it thoroughly then

…poured out a 1/2 cup of that newly mixed solution and

…dribbled that over another 1/2 piece of fab. i continued like this until all 6 pieces were done.

the wait

i then repeated these steps for each colour and stacked up bin after bin, soooo cool to behold!  btw, i got these hand dandy containers at Target….rubbermaid takealongs squares…. 8 for about $4.00…sweet deal!.

meanwhile…
i had a white shirt that had definitely seen better days (dingy white is so out!) and decided to used some of the remaining dyes on the shirt that i scrunched up in a small bin. can’t wait to rinse this out, love the rainbow effect!

next post…the results, stay tuned.

for more in depth tutorials on dyeing check out these:
paula burch’s “all about dyeing”
terri stegmiller’s “2 colour gradation”
melody johnson’s “the lazy dyer”
melissa’s “fabric dyeing 101″
cynthia st charles’”conservation dyeing“
(this is not the most comprehensive list but a start for those not familiar or needing a refresher)

Tags: hand dyed, hand dyeing, hand dyes // 5 Comments »

here’s my latest find.

believe it or not, this music in this video is composed by the position of the birds sitting on the fence. how flipping cool is that?

a little background…

the composer, Jarbas Agnelli, a Brazilian film director and musician, says “it’s possible to see poetry everywhere”. He saw a photo by photographer, Paulo Pinto, and thought the position of the birds reminded him of musical notes (you can see more of his explanation here…be sure to click the link under the video to get to English subtitles).

Why am I sharing this with you?

…being able to see the possibility in the ordinary is rather extraordinary wouldn’t you say

…seeing beauty in the simple, everyday stuff of our lives helps redirect us back to ourselves and what’s important to us

would that we open our eyes a little wider to ALL the possibilities

Train yourself to see beyond what you ordinarily see, focus more positive energy on the tiny moments, know that the bigger things will right themselves into correctness….and YOUR hidden music will be revealed.

Toodles,

i know, i know…..i’ll get back to showcasing my art soon but indulge me this small respite while i reconnect to me.

Tags: Inspiration, defining one's art, video moments // 5 Comments »