Becka’s Project Journal

I was not organized enough this year to post my annual costume-a-day but you can see them in the archives! Just click that label down at the bottom of the post that says “costume-a-day” and it will take you to see 24 quick and easy costume ideas that you can throw together in the next week. It’s my trick or treat to you!

I feel like I have lost 20 lbs! More than 10 inches cut off today and donated to “Locks of Love”. The “before” picture is actually from August – it was the only shot I could find with my hair down, so it was longer than that. I just keep shaking my head to feel how light it is.

I had a comment in a previous post and I thought I would answer it here instead.
“How long does it take you to dye your fabrics? They’re so gorgeous.”

It depends on what I am dyeing. To do most kinds of silk, I can steam set it and the actual dyeing part takes about 5 minutes. First, I mix up colors. Most of the dyes I work with are in powdered form. Sometimes with silk, I use food coloring or koolaid though. Then I “do stuff” to the silk – fold it, crumple it, stitch it – anything to give the fabric some texture. Then I put dyes on it, usually with squirt bottles, so I can control where they go. I usually only mix up 3-5 colors and do a lot of blending to get everything else. Finally, I either steam set in the microwave (2 minutes) or set it with a mordant and let it “cure” for 1-4 hours. Rinse, dry and iron.

Cotton is much the same, but not steamable to fix the colors. So cotton has to sit in the dye for an hour or more.

So, it’s pretty fast depending on the complexity of the pattern I am doing. I tend to do a whole bunch of small pieces at once, so I will have a dozen new pieces but only about 9×12 inches of each one. (The photo above is acually a batch of t-shirts sitting on our back step.)

Pattern: Ilean (downloadable on Ravelry)
Yarn: Louisa Harding Castello, wool, poly, nylon, acrylic. Close up it looks like a thread of blue, one of black one of shimmery gold. Used just a little more than one skein.

It’s basically a loop that I can slip over my head. It was a rainy day today and this was quite cozy. An easy to memorize pattern (which is usually very hard for me). Love it.

I love the texture in these photos. Hope they inspire something creative for you.

A big shout out to Schlaifers Enamels. I needed a rush order to finish up some bridesmaids jewelry and it’s already in the mail. Their customer service is top notch, friendly and they are my heros today!

PMC = Precious Metal Clay

I have worked with the silver metal clay before with mixed results. It is a little bit like trying to sculpt with bubble gum. I have not been pleased. But a week or two ago, I got a book about using enamels with pmc. I thought the book might give me a little guidance – this stuff can’t be that bad to work with or no one would use it. I have to say, the author is my hero. So far, my favorite bit of advice has been:

When working with metal clay, a good rule of thumb is the 10-80-10 plan. This means plan to spend 10% of your time working with the wet clay, 80% of your time on the greenware sanding and finishing, and 10% of your time on postfire finishing.

PMC works in several stages. You have this wet bubblegum stuff that you make in to something. Then you let it dry overnight. Then you have a dusty clay “greenware” piece that you can sand and file to your heart’s content. Then you fire it. I did not appreciate the greenware stage appropriately. I just cut the circles, stamped the leaves (see below) and then left these to dry. All the rest I did in the dry stage. What a difference.

I am thrilled to pieces with these two new silver enamels.
(edit: can’t get the other image to post tonight. I will try again tomorrow.)

These are silver, stamped with a hand carved stamp and then filled with enamel. The discs are about the size of a quarter and are slightly rippled, giving them a kind of organic look. The ripple was purely a coincidence – I fired them on a three pointed trivet and they bent a bit while firing. I liked they way it looked, so I didn’t try to flatten them. It’s like a leaf in a puddle.

I also invested in a tiny little dremel tool. It has a lovely wire brush attachment that polished these up to a nice brushed finish. Not too shiny, just right. They will be in the shop soon, although I may just have to keep one for myself.

A lovely long weekend for me. Sigh. And it’s almost over.

I spent today cutting out puppets, getting ready for the holidays. I have 90 cut out and in bags now. I still need to do about 10 lions and some penguins and then I will be done cutting. I do some kind of a new animal every year. Last year was a rhinocerous. The year before was a moose. This year I am going to try hedgehogs. I have them cut out, but I am not sure how they will look quite yet. I like to do puppets in stages – first I cut; then all the machine sewing – bodies, then ears, then heads, then beaks and things; and finally curling up with movies and the hand sewing. It will take me about 30 hours to finish all of these. Yipes!

This evening, I finished up a few odds and ends and then designed a little tiny needlepoint elephant. I am going to make more ornament kits for my etsy shop. I found two packages of hardanger cloth, which really looks to me like tiny cross stitch fabric, at the thrift store. They are bright red and blue and were just begging to be made in to something cute. I haven’t decided how to finish the ornament yet, but I think they might be little heart shaped “pillows” with some vintage fabrics on the back.

We also figured out how to make the fax machine on our printer all-in-one thing work. The place I order enameling supplies from doesn’t have online ordering and so I usually fax the order in. I discovered that I have a special order for enamels in the works and I am out of all kinds of my favorite copper blanks, namely the ones I need. I have my fingers crossed that they can get my order out to me soon!