Patchwork Underground

when all the sudden I saw this:

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?

My latest craft addiction: linocuts (a.k.a woodcuts or block printing). It’s a super-easy way to basically make your own huge, arty stamp. Once you’ve carved your “block,” you can reproduce the image again and again fairly quickly….

Unfortunately, what we’re talking about here does involve carving tools. These can be spendy but I found my set at a thrift store and they work great. The rest of the supplies you’ll need can be picked up at your local crafts store - you’ll need a block of linoleum and some printing ink (I used Speedball’s black). Beacause I was planning on making a lot of prints, I invested in this glorified rolling pin called a brayer. You use it to apply ink to the stamp - er, block. Prints are made by placing a piece of paper on top of the inked stamp and then rubbing the paper with the back of a spoon. Hours of enjoyment.

Here’s some new purdy pictures I took of our latest block print/woodcut mini-journals and cards….

I want to post them on my Etsy shop but there are so many different color combinations (we made a BUNCH….seriously) that I’m overwhelmed by cataloging it all for folks’ shopping pleasure….in the meantime, you can see more pics from my photoshoot here.

Welcome to the new PatchworkUnderground.com!! Some of you may have noticed that things have changed quite a bit around here….

First thing’s first. Don’t panic! All of my handmade skirts, headscarves, scarves and other goodies are still available for purchase on Etsy. You can find my new shop here: http://patchworkunderground.etsy.com.

I finally even got around to making that gallery that everyone’s been bugging me about. You can click on that “portfolio” button up there at the top of the screen to check out all the best Patchwork Underground pieces of the last 2 years.

OK, one more big piece of news - brace yourself - because it’s official…my housebus blogging and my crafting blogging are getting a divorce. Trying to fit all that crafting and all that bus-building into one little blog turned out to be too much for one little site to handle.

From now on, PatchworkUnderground.com will be home to my new, non-bus-related crafting blog! (Don’t worry, you can find my bus-building/bus-living blog right where you left it, at http://patchworkunderground.blogspot.com). Check back here often (or better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed!) so that you’ll be in on all the neat craft tips, creative inspiration, DIY news and vintage/retro crafting tidbits I’m gonna be posting here.

One more thing: I just want to say “thank-you” to all my loyal customers for your years of support and encouragement! You are some of the most kind people in the world. I hope ya’ll love the new design, look and feel of the site. Please let me know what you think!

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