I’m speechless…. Found this ditty on Flickr from http://www.crochetbynumbers.com

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Walked into my local art store today and a silk painting kit caught my eye. Never seen it before. Apparently you can paint on silk. This means that YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN SILK SCARVES!!!! I am obsessed with vintage silk scarves so this revelation was a HUGE one for me. Like, WOW. Of course, at $30 plus the cost of the silk I didn’t buy the set…yet. I took it to the internet instead. Here’s what I found out: The process involves a special kind of paint that brilliant yet pliable and doesn’t mess with the flow of the silk. It’s also washable. Step #1 – You stretch the silk out on a stretcher (looks like I could rig one up with an empy window frame/picture frame and some thumbtacks) and then put your resist on the silk. There are several techniques for this and they all produce different results (exciting!). Looks like you can use wax but there are other techniques too – lots of them – involving salt and alcohol and something called dutta. Step #2 – Paint it with special silk-painting paints. Step #3 – Let the paint dry and the steam the silk to set the paint Here’s a couple examples to get those creative juices flowing….. More beautiful examples here, here and here. Oooooo I so want to try this!! Has anyone else given silk painting a go? How was your first go-round?

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I finally took pictures of all the yummy head scarves I made for Holiday Market that didn’t sell. I made 150+ and it was an unusually slow market so I’m still rollin’ in head scarves. God bless self-directed self-photography though, seriously. How else could I take this many semi-decent pictures of myself? I love these new-fangled digital cameras. Check it out…no two alike! How did I make them? Well, they’re lined with a cute fabric on the side that goes against your head, so first I serged the edges of the lining and the outer fabric together using contrasting thread. Then I attached ribbons to the ends and then I stitched a felt cut-out of a flower onto the finished product using a star pattern. When they’re all hanging over a clothesline together in my booth they look adorable – you can’t help but come in and play with all the dangly ribbons. The display is a babe magnet. I wanted to post them here first to give ya’ll a first glimpse before I post them on Etsy. I’m going with the 1 Etsy post a day rule – the theory is that your new listing will top-list in people’s searches and bring more traffic to your shop. We’ll see how that goes. Hope you guys like ‘em! People seemed to like them at market but they just didn’t go as fast as I’d hoped…

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All of the artists I feature in my “Spotlight On:” series are personal crafts inspirations to me. Seems to me that no crafter can really work in isolation because we’re all drawing off that single creative principal. The first artist I want to feature in my “Spotlight On:” series is Taryn and Jeff’s business, Mystic Orb Talismans. For the last two years I’ve been vending at the Saturday Market and Holiday Market cooperative in Eugene, OR. These folks appeared one day out of nowhere with a completely magical booth filled with jewelery and other needful things. They are both very down-to-earth people and totally passionate about what they do. Check out the pics below to see what I mean….these pieces really speak for themselves. (Note: This show-and-tell could go on for ages. I spend years in their booth picking everything up and trying it on. It was a struggle to restrain myself from uploading everything onto this post.) About technique: The little line-drawings are done using an ancient technique called scrimshaw. Jeff scratches the image into bone (or sometimes stone) and then fills the carving in with ink. These images are TINY – he uses a needle-sized tool and a magnifying glass to do it. I never even knew what scrimshaw was before I met him. I guess it’s a sailor thing. (FYI, I strongly suspect these folks were a pirate duo in a past life.) Jeff also does fantastic wood-carvings and inlays with whatever kinds of rocks he can get his hands on. Lately he’s been using picture jasper in his work which just really gives me the willies! I LOVE picture jasper and the organic shapes in the stone really compliment his earthy designs. If you want to read more about Taryn and Jeff (and maybe check out pictures of their little goats or their on-going home renovation project!) visit their website, http://www.mysticorbtalismans.com or check out their Etsy shop at http://mysticorbtalismans.etsy.com. They’re new to Etsy and they’re already 70+ listings strong! These folks are truely epic crafters….

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My favorite thing about visiting Santa Rosa is the thrifting. There’s tons of thrift shops here – even the old-school “bins” type where you get to dig around in massive piles of unsorted, unwashed clothes. Ahh…heaven. So meditative. This week, I scored two amazing vintage macrame magazines. Macrame is one of those dying art forms that our moms barely remember doing through the haze of the 70′s. Did you know you could macrame a table or a chair? Me neither. Check it out…. I think of two women when I think of macrame: First, my good friend, Lara, who is not only cool enough to have found a macrame owl necklace but also wear it regularly. Second, my grandma. She had a huge macrame hanging pot-holder thing. It holds a big raku urn/pot that she made (she was a full-time potter). It hangs big, dark and low to the ground and the macrame part is all kinds of chunky jute. Even though she’s gone now, her giant macrame thing is still hanging there in her Eikler’s atrium, visible from all angles because like a lot of Eiklers, the atrium was in the center of the house and the glass walls go right through to the family room…that’s a seriously classy piece of macrame, grandma! I’ve macramed a sampler or two in my day but never something giant. Maybe it’s time for a macrame come-back? And no….I don’t mean macramed iPods cozies.

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