Christmas Kitties

So, being a crazy cat person and having the holidays coming up, I thought it was fitting to combine the two.  Especially if they are wearing Christmas outfits.  I had a holiday craft show, so I turned them all into ornaments as well.  Then the back they all say 'Meowy Christmas'

More and more plumerias!

Got some new batiking materials in! Which means time to start getting some batiks done.  While waiting for my supplies I designed several scarves. One of which was with plumerias! Who doesn't love plumerias? 

So, supplies show up and time to get started on the process. I started by tracing my line work onto the silk for the scarf.  After that, I was debating between starting with the flowers or the background, flowers won. 

Then, time to start the work of the background base colour and the leaves.

 Iron, wash, and rinse. Then complete! It's 8" wide,  44" long.

Travelin' the World

To get better at updating, I set a goal for myself to update at least every other week, preferably every week.  It's nearing that 2 week mark so update! I've been working on some paintings, but they are going slow (very slow).  Tomorrow, I leave for Florida for two weeks (yay!) and will probably not get to much updating cause of working at Disney, and maybe a bit of playing while I'm there.  So I figured I'll post some work from my last semester that I never got to post yet.  


One of the things I love most, is traveling.  So, I created some travel imagery (for things such as posters, postcards, ect).  Enjoy!

Venezia, Italia! (Venice- if not able to be told by the gondola)  

Na Pali Coast on the Island of Kaua'i, Hawai'i

China

Plumeria Practice

I've been doing quite a few batiks lately, and the different colours have just been blocked in.  I wanted to try something different and new where I more of painted with the dyes and blended the colours.  So to try this idea, I just did a test swatch.  Its about 12x15 inches.  

 I love plumerias, one of the prettiest and best smelling flowers.  But, I'm also pretty happy and excited about how this worked.  Will definitely be doing more of this within my batiks.  

Fish Scarf

I've been having fun with batiks, besides they are a nice change from paintings.  For this I wanted to create a scarf that wasn't just a pattern, but something more fun and design-y or illustrative.  So, fish swimming! 

Playing around with the values of the different parts, I settled on the bottom right

Exploring different colour variations.  I really like the 2 furthest right, but I didn't think the orange would translate well to a batik, so the right one won.

Full final. The silk is a very light, transparent one, which I think enhances the fish

Fancy artsy picture

Close up on some of the fish

Big Cats

So, at then end of the past year, I did a set of posters with some big cats (meow).  However, my computer died and they were lost within my external hard drive,  but now its fixed and they're back!  I plan to continue the series and do some more kitties (a snow leopard is already in works) along with some other animals.

Cheetah

Tiger

Lion

Sister Bonding

 For the holidays my sister, Valerie, came in from Seattle. She loves to knit and crochet and will probably die knitting where people will find her mummified in a cocoon of yarn years later.  (Check out her knitting here: http://vallymade.blogspot.com/)   While she was in town, we went and picked up natural (non-dyed) wool yarn so we may dye it ourselves and she would then knit them.   You start by rinsing the yarn, wring, and while still slightly damp you dab on they dye so it is sure to get through all the layers.   Once dyed, you wrap in saran wrap and steam for about an hour.  We let it sit over night once steamed and rinsed it in the morning and hung it to dry.  Once dry it is now knittable.  We used Jacquard (Green Label) Dyes.

 

  Pre-dyed yarn

 

 Val dying hers

 

Val's final (pre-steamed) yarn

 

Me dying mine

 

 My final (pre-steamed) yarn