my Halloween Highlights

Painting faces all day at the Pannikin was not only fun but so entertaining. How cute is this little girl? She spoke only french and was so serious and lovely. She asked for a butterfly like the one I painted on myself.
The Frida costume was my personal favorite. She paid attention to the details and she looked beautiful which is hard to pull off when you give yourself a fake mono-brow.
The highlight of the day was when we were invaded by a group of cyclists. Look closely and you'll see Elvis with his wig over his helmut. Turns out they are all friends, not a cycling team, who do this every year.

Random Paintings

Here's my latest series of paintings I finished on birch wood panels. I hope to have them available in my shop next week. I promise. Karin

What NOT to do!

Just a little rant.........

I'm so disgusted with the way some people treat animals! It just makes me feel so sick inside. I received a call the other day from my neighbor who heard of someone who needed a home for their chickens. They were only a year and a half old, but she was replacing them with some chicks. I told my neighbor I'd take two more, and I have plenty of friends that would interested as well.
So today we all drove out to a beautiful home about 45 minutes away with our kennels in the truck. When we got there, we saw a nice house on about four acres and a cute little chicken coop. When I got closer, I saw they had 14 chickens in a coop suitable for 6, plus a rabbit cage with 17 baby chicks! The poor chickens were so badly pecked from being in confined quarters and very malnourished from a poor diet.
Now I know what people are talking about when they say that chickens smell horrible. My chickens have never smelled a bit. These poor girls reeked! What animal wouldn't smell if they were confined in their own feces without enough space to move around? This was just crazy to me. So, of course we had to take them all. I just feel so bad for the chicks. They are destined for the same kind of life.
The good news is they've all been placed in fabulous homes where they will be pampered and cared for. I ended up with 3 of them and need to start thinking of some names. So far I have Charlotte and Olive. I still need a name for the one who got the worst of it. She's mainly white with some black spots and has feathers on her feet (or used to have feathers on her feet). I know she'll be beautiful again, but right now she looks like a half bald turkey with fat feet. Any ideas? She needs a pretty name to make her feel better.
Tonight they are all sleeping quietly with my other girls and I plan on spoiling them with a super veggie breakfast in the morning.

Final Class Project

So..... here it is!
Since it was the last class of the season, I wanted to teach something that they could all start and finish in class. They have been begging me all year to learn how to needle felt, but I was nervous letting them use the barbed needles. We made it throught the day with only a few needle mishaps. Both classes did a great job making their owl baby ornments. Here's a picture of the first class. Even one of the parents couldn't resist taking part. Chato is a fabulous artist in his own right and made an old Saint Nick ornament.

On another note..... I wanted to thank Rose Reyes over at Unik Apparel Style for interviewing me on her blog. It was a lot of fun.

Hope you all had a great weekend. Karin

Fabric Printing Continues

After printing sample swatches last week, we felt confident enough to work on some larger pieces. Francesca preferred using the bleach pen for her blue sarong pattern which I think turned out pretty cool. Carol chose to do a wax batiking method for her paisleys, and I used a watery white paint to stencil my design onto the fabric.

Today was the last weekend for my kids art classes. I needed to take a winter break to prepare for some upcoming shows. I'll see them all back in January.
Wait till you see what they made on their last day. So cute! I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

I spent part of today making a Tiki mask for Art. He was cleaning up the palm trees the other day and jokingly held up one of the branches in front of his face. I said "you look like a tiki"....... and then a light bulb went off and we knew it would be this years costume. I just need to drill holes for the eyes, add some straps to the back and maybe some foam backing for comfort. (Zuri will be so jealous!)
The last few years I've always dressed up as some sort of flying bug. This year I bought a new pair of wings because my old ones were pretty thrashed. When I opened them up, I saw that they only had detail and glitter on the outside. How dumb is that? From the front you would only see plain black nylon. So I tried to return them since I've only had them for a day, but the store won't take anything back after Oct. 17th. I ended up bringing them back home, painting the inside and adding lots of glitter. Now the inside looks better than the outside, so I'll probably redo the back as well.

If any of you are near the Pannikin on Halloween and you have little ones, please stop by. They hired me to do face painting (which I've never done) from 10-2. I tried to say no like three times, but finally caved in. This should be interesting. I'll make sure to bring my camera.

Musical Furniture and another Party

Well, more like three parties over the past weekend. Whew, I think I'm done for awhile. Although they were all fun and festive, it's time to get back to my normal routine.
Here are some delicious desserts from my friends bakery. If you haven't been there yet, you're missing out. Everything she bakes is amazing.

I also got the "musical furniture" bug again and decided to switch up our guest/throw away room. There is waaaaaaaay too much furniture in here so I'm loaning my sister one of the iron beds and I'm painting over the pink walls. I knew the minute I finished painting them pink it wasn't the right color, but was too tired to change it. The turquoise dresser has a new spot in my room. It makes the perfect night stand. This transformation is moving at a snails pace, so don't expect any after photos anytime soon.

Sangria

That's the name of this new piece I finished. It's painted with acrylics on a birch wood panel. The darkest color is actually a deep blackberry but my camera shows it as being more black. I've been playing around with this image and I think it makes a pretty groovy fabric pattern. I'm already invisioning pillows and curtains. We shall see. Hope you like it? Karin

Mark your calender!

I am happy to annouce that I will at the upcoming Patchwork Fair in Santa Ana. This is one of my favorite Indie arts and crafts shows and I'm looking forward to participating in it again this year. You definitely don't want to miss this one. Chalked full of artists, live music and incredible people watching. Actually, I think the people watching is my favorite part.

You can click on the image for all the details.

Finally...........right?

Didn't I say I was going to add these to my Etsy shop like a month ago? I can't believe how long it's taken me but they're finally making their way. They're trickling in as I speak and I'll be adding a few each day this week. Hope you enjoy them.

Also, I wanted to thank all of you who made it to Art and Souls anniversary party and checked out my larger paintings on display there. I loved hearing from you and really wished I could have been there.

Trial and Error-Fabric class cont'd

After dyeing our fabric last week, today was all about trying different printing techniques. We decided pretty fast which ones we liked and which ones we didn't. I ended up distroying my hand cut stencil when my bleach pen ate it up, warping it beyond repair. My stencil was too thin so I had to switch to some thicker manufactured ones I had. I found that that stenciling with a soft bodied white paint gave me the clean crisp lines I was looking for. Francesca liked the blurryness of the bleach pen and Carol did a great job stenciling with wax and dipping her fabric in a darker dye. The only method we didn't try yet was block printing with the hand carved blocks we made.

A Perfect Day!

Here are just a few pictures I took of my friends wedding. Doesn't she look so pretty?
The weather was perfect and the evening was absolutely magical with twinkling lights, glowing lanterns and candles burning everywhere. I have to say that this was one of the most entertaining weddings I've been to in a long time. Such a great group of people and I made a lot of new friends that I'll definitely be keeping in touch with. I wish I had more pictures to share. We'll see as the week progresses.
It took me about three naps today to recover enough to get my house back in order. The backyard is another story.

Pure heaven in a bottle

I just finished bottling my first batch of reed diffuser oils. They are amazingly fragrant and will be available in the shop very soon. Now you can enjoy the scents of my candles without lighting a match. These babies are 100% pure fragrance...... not dilluted like many you find in the stores.
available in:
-Hawaiian Gardenia
-Lotus
-Grapefruit Tangerine
-Lemon Cream

Tomorrow, I'll be picking up all the flowers to arrange for Saturdays wedding. Lots of pictures coming soon!

Today in Class

My monday class decided to do something different and give block printing on fabric a try. We'll be testing a few different techniques to see which effects we like best. Last week was spent carving patterns out of linoleum blocks and cutting various stencil designs from acetate. Today was all about giving the fabrics a base color using different Rit fabric dyes. They didn't turn out exactly how we expected, but they're pretty. The blue was supposed to be turquoise and the pink should've been a cherry red.
The first thing we did was cut up three different wieght fabrics: a soft cotton, some gauzy fabric, and a thicker canvas wieght cotton which was just a lonely curtain panels I had sitting around. Using some color formulas I found online, we made our hot water dye baths. We then pre-soaked our fabric and dipped them into the different colors for about 10 minutes. Lastly, they were hung on the clothesline and rinsed with cold water.

It was so beautiful hanging them all on the line with the golden glow of the sun shining through. They looked tye dyed, but it's actually just the shadows from the palm trees. Tye dye would not make me happy.
We felt like farm girls hanging fabric on the line while the chickens waddled around our feet. Would farm girls dye fabric in these colors? Maybe we were more like farm girls from India making pretty saris.

Next week, we will try stamping them with our blocks, and stenciling with either paint or a bleach pen. Then we'll have to figure out what to make with them. Bags, aprons, sarongs? Any suggestions?