Gel Printing 101

I've been eyeing up the new gel printing plates out there for sale-but they are a little pricey for me.  So...the cheapskate side of me found a recipe for a home made plate and I managed to make it and even get it right.  I boiled 2 cups of water and added 8 packets of Knox gelatine.  I stirred until it was totally dissolved and then poured it into a little square pan lined with plastic wrap.  It set up really well overnight just sitting out on the counter.  Tonight I gathered together some things to make marks, stencils, and masks and proceeded to print with plain old craft paint and a brayer.   It wasn't hard to do and was fun.  I need to make myself a bigger work space for the next round of printing.  I'm thinking of cutting the plate down to ATC size and printing each card separately.  I think I'll be saving my pennies to get a larger store bought one to make bigger prints at some point in the future.  

Happy Holidays

I haven't been blogging much lately.  I've been too busy with the holiday madness-or maybe just lazy-no- let's go with too busy.  I did manage to spend some time Christmas day spinning up some art yarn.  It was a while since I had done any spinning.  It felt good.  I have a New Year's resolution-more time spent spinning-less time nodding off in front of the TV.

Book learnin'

I haven't blogged in forever, it seems.  I've been puttering around with all kinds of crafty stuff, and basically getting not much done.  My latest craze, though, has been making leather bound books.  I happened upon some really pretty journals made by other folks that are selling the books for a lot more than I'm willing to spend.  Sooooo, I started digging around in all those corners where I've been hoarding the scrap pieces of leather that I dig out of the garbage at work (we do upholstery work there).  It seems I have enough scraps to make a couple of cows (that's a lot by the way).  I've made a few journals now and I'm very happy with them.  I hope to make more so I can use up all that leather.

A mind of its own

I had a yarn in mind..
I spun up a thin single from a soft, fluffy and sparkley batt on the antique wheel.  That little bugger likes to spin fast and furious.  I treadled slowly, but it still flew like the wind.  It's a double drive that I have yet to learn how to control completely.  But I did get a consistent thin yarn.  I started to ply it on my Traddy-but it just refused to spin decently.  So I figured the country spinner can handle anything-and it can.  But, what I was going for and what actually happened are two different things.  I just wanted to kind of core ply the single onto a brushed mohair core.  There was so much twist in the single that it just kept twisting onto itself no matter what I tried.  So I gave in and let it do its own thing.  I'm not sure I could purposely repeat what happened-but boy do I love it.  I'm not sure I even did it-the yarn took over and did its own thing-I was just along for the ride.
This is not the yarn I had in mind.

 

Mixed media jewelry

A while back I tried my hand at making some paper jewelry and was pleased with how it turned out.  I finally got a whole necklace finished and I love it!

The necklace part is some hand spun art yarn, then the pendant is a blend of paper (for the large oval) and a metal washer, a copper domed disk and a bead.  I fashioned a bail from some copper colored flat wire and made spirals for end caps with a clasp.  I wore it to a bead show and was thrilled to get some very nice compliments, one being that it looked like Raku pottery.  I just added some embossing powder on the top of the paper.  I'm trying to make more, but that dang old full time job just keeps taking up all my time.

Foster Mom

Well, I'm trying my hand at being a foster parent-no-not a real kid.  It's an antique spinning wheel that belongs to my BFF (Yup, Carol, that's you).  I talked her into letting me take it home to see if I could get it working. Well, I polished it up, oiled it, made a new drive band and had it going in no time.  One problem was a horrible screechy squeak-with my windows open, I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard, and wondered if I was strangling a cat.  Oil didn't do it, so out came the candle wax.  I applied it about 5 times before it finally quieted down.  But, the squeak sounded like it was saying the name Judith Anne-so with Carol's okay we named her Judith Anne-I call her Judie.  Once I figured out the ins and outs of double drive I spun up some Egyptian cotton I've had packed away for a couple years, did some lace weight wool for a shawl I want to make, and-I bought some flax and started to spin that.  I had to make a distaff for it-parts of it were missing. So I dug up a couple dowels and fashioned a usable distaff.

Flax-interesting stuff.  I researched every website and Youtube video I could find.  It is very different to spin.  Not especially hard-just different.  I can get it pretty thin without it breaking, but I don't think it will become fine linen.  More along the lines of rope.  Oh well, at least I can claim to be a pretty well rounded spinner now.

It Sounded Like a Cool Idea

Ice dyeing-sounds cool-hey?  Well...not so much.  First I had to go shopping to get some ice cube trays, cuz who knows what happened to the ones I had?  Then I made lots of ice.  I put some wool (soaked in vinegar and water first) in the bottom of the bin to soak up the run off, and then some in a wire basket and topped it off with all the ice.  Then I sprinkled several different colors of dye all in the purple blue and pink family.  I covered it with plastic and set it out in the sun to do its magic.  Notice there is no finished dyed wool in the picture.  It did not turn out.  Soooo...I divided up the water on the bottom of the bin and the wool into two pots on the stove and did some boiling instead.  I added some dark purple to one of the pots.  I haven't taken pictures of those colors-but I got a lavender from one pot and dark purplish/burgundy from the other.  I didn't get the results I hoped for-but still got some pretty color.