Stability

 I know this blog seems dead and gone but it isn't. I have been traveling...moving...for a year now. Actually more than a year. I started packing my house back in Jan 2022. Since then I have been moving from place to place, often with only two suitcases. Most of my things are scattered in three different countries. Some I will probably never see again.

Just this last month I moved into an apartment I hope to be in for the next year. I spent the last few weeks getting my area set up to create, and I started making things again this last week. I hope to have my shop up and running soon, within the next few weeks if possible.

I have been playing a lot with my acrylic drops as you can see from this photo. I love these little swirls of color and I have trays of them all around me to pick and choose from as I create. I invested in some nice jewelry trays back in France and made sure they were one of the things I packed to bring with me. I am not sure if I will be able to find replacements when they run out so these may be a limited item. I love how good my drops look in these.

I have also been experimenting with my resin wings, using different methods to make a variety of styles. Each time I make a new set of wings I feel I get closer to perfecting the process. I now feel very confident I can make good, solid pieces that are worthy to put into my shop. When I first made my wings for my flight-of-dreams collection I made so many duds I had a whole box full of them. Now I rarely make a mistake. 

I hope to write a post on the making of my wings soon. And I am not only making wings, I am also going to add other whimsical items.

Stay tuned!

Fairie Bleu

I have been under the weather all week and not able to finish any of the jobs I had planned for the house. It's very frustrating when my body doesn't cooperate with me. All the willpower in the world doesn't help when you have a fever. So I have been spending many days quiet. I have had a lot of nice long naps. I also have had a lot of bowls of oatmeal. It's amazing how comforting oatmeal can be. It really is a healing food! Today I graduated to oatmeal with bananas, I am moving up in the world!

So since I am being so quiet and not really having energy to do anything much, I picked up this piece I have been working on since October. I haven't really had a chance to work on it lately but I really want to get it done because this will go on the wall in my bedroom. I already have the frame bought!


I really love the delicate feel to it and hope to copy this feel through out the room. I know my kitchen and living room are bright and modern and colorful but that is not the only side of me! I have this bohemian hippy chick side hiding but not for long! Someday I will start working in my bedroom and you will get to see a whole other side of me!

Until then I hope you all have a beautiful rest of the week. Remember the weekend is upon us!

Small Cotton Tassel Tutorial

 
I recently finished making one of my treasure bags. I wrote about it here and mentioned that I would make a tassel tutorial soon. Well I was a bit delayed because I realized after I took all the pictures that the colors of the tassels were way too dark for people to see what I was doing. So I remade one with lighter colors.

I am a thrifty person and hate to throw anything away. Whenever I dye my cotton embroidery floss I wrap it into big hanks. I tie those hanks in several places to keep them sorted so they don't end up a big mess when i am done with the dyeing and washing. Now when i first started doing this I would tie them with any old yarn or bits I had around, then i would snip them off and throw them away when done. I realized this was a waste, even if a small one, and started tying them with floss itself. What i ended up with was lots of little 4-5 inch pieces of wonderful dyed floss. They work perfectly for making small tassels. Now you can do this with any 6 ply floss and  still get nice results. If you want to try to recreate the look of mine you can try using variegated floss, or even several pieces of different colored floss.

We begin with around ten pieces of floss at 4-5 inches long. If you want a 

thicker tassel just use more pieces. 

Take these and fold them over the cord you will be using. 

Then take the floss you will be wrapping at the top and make a loop with that floss, setting it up against the folded pieces. You want the loop pointing down towards the ends.

Now start wrapping your floss around the folded pieces, first wrapping two or three loops up towards the fold and then back down towards the ends. Wrap about 3/8" down, then back up to where you started and then back down again. So in the end you have three layers of wrap. 

Cut off your wrapping floss and thread the end through the loop.

Pull the end of your wrapping floss that is sticking out up at the top slowly...the loop that your floss is threaded through will slowly go up into the knot. Pull it tight till the loop is all the way into the knot and seated firmly inside.

Trim off the two threads and then trim the ends of your tassel even, then run a blunt needle through the pieces to separate them.

Voila, a beautiful cotton tassel. 

I love the look of these on my hand dyed silk velvet treasure bags. They are the perfect finishing touch. You can also use this method with other types of thread, though silk can snag easily to use with care.

I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial. have a great week! Diane

Finished Bag

So here it is, all finished, soon to be on a trip across the sea. I hope she loves it as much as I do. I plan on doing a short tutorial on how to make these simple cotton tassels soon so be on the look out.

The owl will soon take flight!

I have been busy the last month on finishing the two bags for a custom order. I wrote about the Mermaid Bag last week and showed you some pictures. Today I plan on finishing the second bag, a treasure bag. I am so happy to finally finish these two. It was an enjoyable work. It has been a long time since I embroidered and it was good to do it again. I plan on doing a lot more now!

Going Forward

Thank you all so much for your kind words on my last post and Anne I will heed your words of wisdom. I can see where that could easily happen!

I have been very busy with my embroidery floss. I dyed a lot of it the last few weeks but continue on to refill my stock. I was amazed to see how low it was.

 So yesterday I spent the day wrapping skein after skein of floss and setting it to soak in the soda ash. Today I will be mixing dyes and hopefully get all these lovelies steeping in their colors.

Last night I decided to take a rest and play with some fabric. I am loving how this is coming along...

I need quiet here!

I've been feeling a little pressured. I like my solitude. I like it quiet. I like a nice even measured schedule with no surprises. I know, I am weird. Truth is when there is unexpected and I jump into it and flow with it I end up having a good time but...I drag my feet every time. Right now I am working hard at learning about my two new passions, especially the wire, though I have been studying and pondering the beads also ( they will have their run too) Now right when I am in the middle of learning this wonderful new art I also hire a French teacher and we had guests all weekend. Now dont get me wrong, I am glad I hired the teacher and I accept the fact that she is going to start taking up a lot of my time. I also really enjoyed having our guests. I just get in this mind set where all I want to do is create. I want to sketch and study and learn everything there is to learn about the new passion and when I am like this there is no room for anything else. So I guess I am feeling a bit disgruntled and very stingy with my time. It will all settle back down soon I hope and sort itself into some kind of routine. Here's hoping!

Anyway, I finished two of my wire pieces this week despite feeling pressured on all sides. I also dyed another piece of the electric dreams. I am quite thrilled with the results! Now back to studying, drawing, wrapping wire and of course...playing!

Is that a robin I see/

So things are looking up around here, the smell of spring is in the air. My stomach flu seems to have turned tail and disappeared!I am starting to feel back to my normal self and this is a good thing. This week I met an English teacher in the elevator of my building. She offered to start helping me with my french and I jumped on that. So yesterday I went to my first conversation club and I had a blast. I think this is going to help me out a lot. It is so convenient that she lives in my building too. I am thrilled.

I did a few pieces in the dye bath this week. This lovely piece was for a custom order. It's a difficult job but I think it turned out good. The little piece you see in the upper left corner was the piece I was trying to copy. I do think it is lacking the pinks of the original but that's the beauty of hand dyed. It's never the same!

I have also been working gung ho on my wire wrapping. The more i do, the more I want to do. Hubby said I can buy myself tools for my birthday present. That is just TOO exciting for me. I cant wait till I have some better tools to work with and more wire....definitely more wire.

So my owl is almost done. I have a few more things to do to him and then I will put a darker patina on him. I really like how he turned out.

I started a new piece too, this is the first part of it. A dragonfly!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Winter Blues

This week I had the stomach flu, this means that for almost the entire month of February I have been sick! I am ready for spring. I am ready for all these ills to go away. I have a theory about all of these germs. Hubby is on a train every day for almost 2 hours each way. I think being packed into that train with lots of other poor souls all with their own germs makes for a perfect petri dish and I am catching the results! He also has been sick most of the month and he is NEVER sick. Poor guy. I don't know how he does it but he is my hero! He works so hard and rarely complains. I am a lucky girl for sure.

So despite being ill I have tried to keep up a bit. I stacked and organized all my new goodies to get an idea of what is ready and what is in dire need of a good ironing. I am happy to say the ironing pile is not as big as i expected. I even have a lot of the photos taken. If I keep this up I might even become efficient (don't hold your breath). I have high hopes that this coming week will be sick free and productive. At least it's a good goal :)

The wire wrapping bug has hit me hard. I am totally and completely under it's spell now. Even when I was feeling my worst I was still catching myself picking up a piece and fiddling with it. I adore it! This is the new piece I have started.

That makes three in production now, all in various stages of completion. I worked on each till I reached a point where I couldn't continue without something I didn't have. Since this is new to me I have very few materials on hand. So I made another order and I am patiently waiting for new supplies to arrive so I can finish my three babies. I'm astonished to say that I haven't even been missing my needle!

I hope I am not boring you all with my lack of needlework projects. I have always been one to jump around though and I know I will eventually make it back to my beloved sewing. This for right now is a great substitute...oh and the beads, I just adore the beads!

Missing the Sun

Happy Saturday to everyone! I am sitting here staring at the wall of grey out my window and dreaming of sunny days. I am very ready for spring this year. It's been cold and bleak here.



I have continued working with the wire wrapping and I am just in love with it. I find myself dreaming of new pieces so I know it has sunk a hook in my heart. So this is the new piece I started. It is not finished yet and I have many plans for it still but as you can see...I went a bit crazy with it!


I also did a nice big batch of silk gauze and habotai this week. Seems I have completely sold out in the shop so I thought I would make a few more. Every time I dye the big pieces of silk I fall in love all over again. There is such beauty in this cloth. Ironing it out after it comes from the wash I marvel at the sheen, the iridescent quality of the colors laid upon the surface. I do so love to play with these!

Fun with new mediums

This week I received the means to try my hand at a few new techniques: My bead loom which I already showed you and a set of small jewelers tools and two rolls of silver plated wire. I've been interested in trying both the beadweaving and the wire wrapping for some time now so I was thrilled to acquire the tools and materials to do so. I have had a lot of fun playing around with both this week and here are my results:



I think I like the wire wrapping over the bead weaving. Simply because of the freedom of design. I really enjoyed making this piece and I plan on trying my hand at another this week


I liked the bead weaving but I also felt hampered by the restrictions in design. I am used to being able to do whatever I want when stitching. With beads you are confined to squares of color and so it really restricts the flow of your design. Also the beads must all be the same size. Even though I used good Japanese seed beads(miyuki and toho) the different colors varied in width and caused the design to ripple.
I do like the bead weaving but I don't think I like it as much as the wire wrapping.

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Moving on

Life is looking up this week. I no longer sound like a frog. I can get out of my chair without a great struggle and the temperature is actually on the positive side of the zero for the first time in weeks. To make things even better I had some great success with the dye pots this week AND my bead loom arrived in the mail. I am a happy camper =D

When getting this last dye batch together I was having such a difficult time coming up with a color combination. Iwas getting ready to dye the largest amount of material at one time that I have ever done. When you are staring at several hundreds of dollars of gorgeous white fabric it takes courage to start dumping dyes in that pot. I mulled for days over what to do and finally I picked this palette:

I was a little worried about the combination because I knew I would get greens in the mix with the yellow and blue tones being present but in the end I decided I didn't care. I also knew that the blues would not be as deep unless I wanted to use a different dye. Silks can be quite picky with certain colors especially blacks and darker blues. So I threw caution to the wind and mixed up my giant dye batch.


The results in my mind were glorious! Does it exactly match the palette I picked? No, but it has the spirit of it and that's what I was going for.


The velvet of course is much deeper and way vibrant and usually I enjoy that more but the softer touch is what appeals to me in this batch, though I love them all. I adore the silk gauze and habotai. The ribbons are just luscious! I am quite thrilled with this one and I can't wait for my next batch.

My second highlight of the week was receiving my bead loom and I love it! I looked at them long and hard before I bought one and decided before hand that I wanted a wood one. This one is perfect for me. Although I may make some more side bars that are longer if I want to do bigger pieces.


I set to work right away making up a pattern and this is what has come of it so far. I wasnt sure if I would like doing loom beading but I love it. It is another way to satisfy my urge to create with patterns and color and it is not a great strain on my eyes. I find myself more and more treating my eyes gently. I think the eye problems of the last year scared me more than I wanted to admit at first. I am trying to find ways of expressing myself creatively without the great eye strain I was putting myself through. This looks like it might be a good one!

Hope you have all had a wonderful creative week and have a peaceful and renewing weekend!

SO... you know the chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times"? Well this month has been interesting, Starting off with the fatal back move. You know the one...the one where you bend over to pick something up and something just didn't move right? Next thing you know you can't get out of a chair without making moves like Micheal Jackson in the Thriller. Well that was me for over a week which softly faded into... The Sickness From Hell. You know the one where you can't sleep at night because you can't breath and you continuously sneeze, you go through your entire stock of Kleenex and you sound like a frog. plus your head is pounding so hard is sounds like a heavy metal music practice session? Yeah that's me and that saga continues though I don't sound so much like a frog anymore. I forgot how much grossness a body could produce. Could someone please turn off the faucet?!? To top all this off, just as my backache is fading and still in the middle of this snotfest my laptop decides to give up the ghost. Poor baby just couldn't take it anymore. It has went to play with all the other outdated and over abused technology in the sky. I am typing this on my brand spanking new shiny white laptop that I am just falling in love with. It has a keyboard that actually works!
So my reasoning is that all my bad luck decided to show up right off the bat at the beginning of the year and the rest of the year is going to be devoted to fun times and good stuff, right?
So I have been experiencing a big hankering for playing with beads, beads and wire. I can't get either out of my mind. So I have pulled out all my beads and pieces and that is what I am playing with. Oh, and I also ordered some wire *big grin*

New Shop!

I have been very busy setting up my own web shop! I really love the supadupa host and think they offer a great formula for a clean crisp shop layout. I have been wanting my own stand alone shop for awhile and finally this is it!
Since I have reduced the amount of fees by having my own shop I have marked the prices down on my items to bring that savings to my customers. On top of that I am also having a week long sale for my GRAND OPENING! Please stop by and have a look and if something catches your eye enjoy a 15% discount with the coupon code SUPASALE
RainbowFingers

Fun Stuff

I am back in the studio and having so much fun. Wow, do I love to play with my dyes. I found this site that I just love called ColourLovers and I am just starting to play around with it. I made this palette today from one of my pieces



Color by COLOURlovers

And color returns...

My studio is finally set up and I have been a busy bee this last week. Lots of pretty colors flowing and more to come. I am also working hard at updating my etsy shop and beginning work on a store front to be connected to my website. It's a fresh year and I am ready to make things happen! Thank you everyone for your well wishes. I appreciate each and every one of you!

A New Apartment

Well I hope you haven't given up on me. It's been a rough few weeks and I have put off coming here.

First off, we didn't get the apartment we applied for, there was a previous applicant and they got it. We had to make another trip down to Mulhouse and do more apartment searching. This time though we were successful and we found a place that both of us love...

Bright and open, the view is breathtaking AND it has a wonderful kitchen fully equipped and full of cabinets!

I won't know how to act with all this storage space. I have a nice room for my studio with a bathroom right off of it for my dyeing. It is so much easier when a sink is handy! Plus it has a nice walk in closet for storing all my stash. Now to just finish packing and get myself there.

I have my studio completely packed and stopped dyeing last week. I am slowly but surely making my way through the rest of the house, tossing stuff as I go. I feel like I have been packing forever but it's ok because this time I am doing it right and making sure everything is sorted. It's amazing how much you can accumulate in a short period of time.

I go back to the eye doctor Wednesday for a checkup. I have had severe headaches since the surgery and I am hoping she tells me everything is fine. Unfortunately my spot is back in the other eye so I have left off with my embroidery until she has a look at it. Last time I got the spot I was put on a rest for quite awhile. It doesn't seem quite as bad this time so I hope we can catch it early and reverse the process. For now I am afraid I wont have any embroidery or dyeing updates to show you so I doubt I will post again till after the move. I have been messing around with a little needle felting

It's something I can do that doesn't require a lot of strain to my eyes and it's easy to pick up for a few minutes. I am also thinking about doing a bit of velvet ribbon weaving. Even when I cant do what I want, I just can't NOT do something.

Hope you all are well and enjoying this fall weather!

Blackwork Fill and Eye Surgery

First off I just want to say that yesterday my eye surgery went without a hitch. I am already feeling much better and even the light sensitivity is almost gone. I am so glad to have that chapter finished and behind me! I get the jeebies just thinking about someone touching my eye so you can imagine how difficult it was for me.

Last weekend we did manage to make it to Mulhouse and not only did we look at an apartment, we looked at four! We ruled out all but one for various reasons and applied for the other. Unfortunately there are other applicants so we have to sit back and cross our fingers, hoping we get it. I know I don't want a repeat of last weekend searching when it comes to my hip. No matter how much I think I am healed up any kind of strenuous activity and I am right back down again. One thing I have noticed though is I seem to heal back up quicker now so I guess it is all just a process. I know I will never again take for granted the ability to walk. It is a precious thing indeed!

So I wanted to post a few pics of my progress on the coif. I have started filling in the area that I outlined and I am loving it. I get reminded over and over how much I love the blackwork effect. Hubby has decided that he likes it too! I am loving this thread a lot more than the other too. I am so glad I decided to dye this batch. It is much smoother and stronger than the commercially dyed thread I bought, and really isn't hand dyed better...even when it's black?