You Spin Me Right Round

In my post-show glow (note to self: take pictures of your booths!), I've decided that it's time to refocus my shop. This means that a few changes are in store for Kastroll Kreations.

I've decided to focus the shop exclusively on crochet. It's what I'm good at, and what I love. The good news for you, dear reader, is that all of my sewn items are 40% off. Stock up on bibs and blankets for those babies that will inevitably become a part of the lives of your friends, family, and possibly you!


What about my art, you say? Well, my womyn's spirituality art is being spun-off into it's own Etsy store, Goddess Art, at http://goddessart.etsy.com. Here, you'll find my fabric transfers, patches, ACEOs, artSquared, original silk paintings, original line drawings, and any derivative art from these items. For now, the two shops will share a blog (after all, my art is also a Kastroll Kreation), and features will be shared between the two shops. Look for more posts on Goddess Art in the coming weeks, as I transfer the art listings from Kastroll Kreations to Goddess Art.
Back to crochet - I also learned that my accessories are wildly popular - hats, scarves, bags, and the like. But the items that did especially well were the ponchos, shawls, and shrugs. You'll see an increase in the number of clothing items in the coming weeks as I get these items photographed for the shop, and a clearing out of blankets, housewares, and the like. Soap socks and scrubbies, of course, will be available as always.

So many changes. Get ready for the new face of Kastroll Kreations and its sister store, Goddess Art. Both should be ready for their new images in time to ring in the new year.

Tweak-Tweak: A few projects modified

Now that I have Brie in my life, I'm finding crafting, posting, and blogging a bit more difficult. Granted, I'm getting it done, but not with the proliferation I had before. And that, my friends, is actually a good thing. As I type, my little banshee princess is sleeping on the bed. But that is just background for the topic of this post.

Since things are a little harder, I've spent some time tweaking older projects. The first was the soap holder. I decided to give the keyhole closure a try, and I decided, depsite my previous criticism, that I like the design. It looks cleaner. Granted, I still have concerns about small soap slivers disappearing out the larger opening, but even I have to admit that it looks better than a drawstring. So I've decided to sell both styles.

I also had two "eureka" moments for my silk paintings. First, that I could crop an image down to ACEO size in order to make an ACEO. I did this to make "Swimming" an ACEO, and realized that I could do the same for other paintings. My first attempt at this was "Turtle", and I am pleased with how it turned out. Second, as I stared at a beautiful, simple, line drawing done by ivaart, I realized it was an artsquared painting, a collectible form of art whose only requirement is that the finished work be 4x4" (5x5cm). I already have to crop my painting images into squares, so many of my works, especially the prayer flag panels, are well adapted to this. Be prepared to see the images I can't crop into decent looking ACEOs as artsquared items very soon.

Lessons learned:
1) Necessity does breed invention
2) Learning to make time for creating when I've created the most amazing little creature in the whole world is challenging

A Rose-y Sort of Moment (Silk Painting and ACEO)

As other Etsians know fairly well, I love to trade. I think bartering is one of the best concepts mankind ever came up with, and it's a shame that we don't do it more. Lucky for me, many Etsians feel the same way, and I'm even luckier to have found some amazing artists to trade with.

Take StaciRose, creatrix behind (surprisingly enough) Staci Rose Designs. She makes the most incredible positive energy jewelry I've seen in quite some time. Her work is amazingly affordable and stunningly beautiful. I *always* get compliments when I wear her work.

Anywhoo, she has a listing up for customized earrings for mothers, and I thought they would be perfect for my mother-in-law. I asked her if she'd be willing to trade, and she said yes. But she wanted something special. Something custom. An original ACEO.

I confessed that my ACEOs are nothing more than photographs of my silk paintings, and she was fine with that. She wanted something original, that I came up with. Well, my other (until now) unspoken confession is that I haven't been inspired to paint in awhile, but I've missed it. I've been wanting to do something nature-inspired, so I sent her a list of words that I wanted to work with to get her reactions. I based my painting off of those (granted, I don't think a single one of the words I provided or her associations are directly in there, but I do know that they helped me get an idea out of my head and onto the silk).

This painting was the first I've done that involved multiple resist applications. There were areas that I wanted to have color-on-color, with no white-space in between, so I had to move back and forth between the sink, the iron, and the painting table in order to get all the colors laid down. I also wanted to provide a "ready to hang" painting, and I know from experience that silk is extremely difficult to mat and frame. So I placed it into a hoop with a hanging loop.

The image itself was simple. The sun in the sky over mountains with snow, the arid hills, a fertile meadow, a flowering bush, and a brook with fish in it. It encompassed the changingness of the water, had a decent amount of color, showed the life that eminates from the sun... I was originally going to try and encompass all four seasons, but after wrd association, it seemed like I should go in a different direction. I overlayed colors in the meadow and I salted the stream and and the sky. The finished painting turned out far better than I originally thought it would.

Setting it in the hoop was an entirely different story. I ended up using scissors, a hot glue gun, and gads of patience. The result is a 5.5 x 4" oval original... the smallest I've done yet. It makes a pretty nice ACEO, too.

Lessons learned:
1) Put the silk in one hoop size larger than your finished hoop so you don't have to cover the gap lines
2) Salt is cool
3) Baby wash is a multi-tasker
4) Multiple resist painting is challenging and fun

I just hope Staci is as impressed as I am.

How to Submit for Publication Without Really Trying

I have a passion for paper products; I've never really been into emailed thank yous over the real "card in hand" experience. I love to write. I love the feeling of pen on paper, especially when said pen is my favorite fountain pen (my friend for about 8 years and counting). So it should come as no surprise that I prefer planning my days on paper instead of on a Palm or Treo or other such device (although I do use iCal occasionally). My planner of choice is the We'Moon series. I love the stories, the poems, the graphics... if only they had a page per day format (I've actually considered punching holes in the thing and combining it with my Franklin Covey planner so I have the best of both worlds, but alas, I am lazy).

Anyway, I got an email from We'Moon today (I am on their mailing list) with a call for submissions to their 2009 planner. Now, I've never had anything published or reproduced, and I thought, "Hey, why not try?". And so I sit at my computer, watching my printer crank out copies of all of my goddess silks to submit for consideration. There's no money in this (unless I somehow make the cover of the planner), just the opportunity to share my work with other like-minded womyn, but it would be incredibly cool to be happily planning my day and stumble across my own work. That would be a real boost to my day.

So wish me luck. I won't hear back until this time next year, but it's worth the wait!

I'm feeling the love today!

Another one. Another treasury feature. Another ACEO in the treasury.

This one for the EtsyFAST team, and it's kinda funny in a way, because this particular ACEO (Center of the Universe) is *not* a fiber ACEO, just one of my silk painting prints. But who am I to complain? Promotion is promotion!

Thanks to the curator, zero, for picking me for her lovely fiber treasury!

Another Treasury Feature

I'm starting to think I should shift my focus off of fiber craft and onto ACEOs. I'm featured in another treasury today. This one features my "Earth Mother" ACEO. It's especially nice because I'm featured by my street team: ACETSY - the ACEO creators on Etsy.

Special thanks to hojpoj for featuring me, and for giving me tips on how to do originals similar to my silk paintings (Basically, I'd be doing masked watercolors. I'm just working up the courage to try it.).

Then again, I *did* recently receive a bunch of sample fiber from northstaralpacas to start work on the EtsyFAST Fiber ACEO challenge... so maybe I can have both fiber and ACEOs in one fell swoop.

Stay tuned...

Another Treasury

I'm featured in another treasury, which is probably the highest compliment a fellow artist can give on Etsy (other than actually buying your product). This treasury features my Spiral Orb ACEO. Many thanks to the list curator, stonesoupjewelry!

It made my morning... this is good, because my week started out on the wrong foot.

Guess who just joined the ACEO craze?

I've been trying to think of a way to share my gorgeous silk paintings with more than one purchaser. After all, the ones that are in the prayer flags are designed to fray away as your prayers travel on the wind.

So I decided to create six limited edition ACEO runs of 10, yielding my 60 ACEOs. My ACEOs all feature my goddess works - mainly because I couldn't crop the animal or symbology lines into a 2.5 x 3.5" field.

The process of making an ACEO turned out to be more challenging than I thought. I knew that my PictureMate had the capability of producing great quality cards: the PictureMate ink features Epson Claria Hi-Def inks, and that I could load my printer with Premium Glossy Paper. You can't get too much better than that with a home print run.

Truly, the hardest thing of making the ACEOs was getting the cropping right. I had to hand-cut each ACEO from the photo paper. I then had to find a marker acceptable for signing/dating/numbering my ACEOs. I ran two of the 10 in each edition, and posted the Bleeding Heart Womyn and Center of the Universe ACEOs in my store tonight.

That was challenge number two. Yes, listing an ACEO was more challenging than making an ACEO. Etsy does square-centered cropping, so I had to use my original painting images to create my listings. As soon as I have my lightbox ready, I can photograph the actual ACEOs and add thos pictures to the listings, but for right now, I have pictures of the originals. Thankfully, there's no length limit on Etsy item descriptions!

Lessons Learned:
1) Always clean your printheads before doing high-end print runs
2) Paper cutters are heaven-sent
3) Not getting fingerprints on glossy paper is a pain in the booty
4) Plastic jewelry bags make great ACEO sleeves

So there you go... I now have ACEOs. So go get 'em before the run runs out!

Prayer Flags Phase II - Sewing and Stringing

I've finally finished my prayer flags. They are (in my humble, yet incredibly biased opinion) *sweet*.

When I last blogged about this project, I was planning on using my rolled hem foot to hem each one of my panels. That didn't happen. Instead, after much fighting with my trusty machine, we came to an agreement - the rolled hem foot is not something I should ever use again. Partially because the silk was too slick to run under the foot to the feed dogs. But mainly because it was easier to do it by hand.

In any case, I decided not to hem at all. A bit of background on prayer flags. The flags themselves are designed so that they will fray. Yes, they are *supposed* to come apart. As the wind and time pulls the fibers apart, your prayers are carried to the gods for fulfillment. Cool, huh? I felt it would defeat the point of having prayer flags if your prayers were trapped by a rolled hem.

That left a new problem: how to get them strung. After playing around with some casing options, I settled on something much simpler and sturdier. I decided to use cotton wide bias tape to add a top casing. The cotton is more sturdy than the unhemmed silk, and it preserved more of the original panel art to add the tape to the top rather than fold the silk down. So I sewed the bias tape to the heads of the panels.

Finally, I had to create a stringing system. I had my heart set on crochet, and I had a ball of cotton/linen blend lying around in my stash, just waiting for use. I suspended the flags on slip stitched chains; the panels themselves being held between two simple chains. It's easier to understand by looking at the pictures. To create the tiebacks, I just tied on some extra line and braided the ends. This had a two-fold benefit. First, I didn't have to slip stitch in as many chains, and second, I didn't have to weave in any loose ends.

As always, I'm rather proud of my finished project. Lessons Learned:
1) Silk frays easily
2) Silk does not like feed dogs
3) Linen fibers are not at all smooth
4) Braiding linen is incredibly fun

Look for these soon at my Etsy store!

Prayer Flags Phase I - The Silk Painting Process

Prayer Flags are a project that I've been wanting to take on for about six months. I figured it was the perfect way to merge my silk painting (the flags), sewing (the hems and casings), and crochet (the cords) passions into one project. Having the idea was great; my challenge was how to implement it.

You see, we're in a one bedroom apartment, which isn't exactly the best place to set up a silk-stretcher. I don't have the cash for studio space, and the raw silk I use is too delicate for pushpin stretching. I didn't want to use embroidery hoops because flags are traditionally square, and I would waste too much silk creating squares in round frames.

My husband came up with the novel idea of using a scroll frame from my cross-stitch kit to stretch my silks. I could then run my resist lines for each panel, paint within the lines, temp-set, and scroll my way to the next panels. It sounded too good to be true.

So on 17 Feb 07, I started sketching my panels. I decided on three collections of flags, all based on contemporary womyn's spirituality: (1) Feminine Animals, (2) Goddess Imagery, (3) Symbology. I figured four flags per collection would be a good start.

Once I had my sketches done, I got my paint spread together, loaded up my scroll frame, and started painting. This was, admittedly, a tedious process. I worked the panels in pairs. Each time I had to scroll, resist, frame, trace, paint, and then give a temporary heat set with my blow dryer. Once I got through all the panels, I could finally do the heat-set and wash.

All in all, I was impressed. I now have a full-length silk scarf that I am somewhat hesitant to cut up and turn into prayer flags. The scarf itself is a work of art; it has an overall femme theme to it that I like.

My takeaway lessons for this part of the project:
1) Don't use a .09 nozzle, because it leaves too heavy a resist line for such a small (6" x 4.5") canvas
2) The instructions lie. You can't color water-based resists and expect it to hold the color. My initial resist lines were black, but when I did the final wash, it rinsed right out to create a classic white line. It still looks good, but I was trying for black.
3) Silk paintings are near impossible to photograph
4) All the photography doesn't really matter because I can only publish 5 images per blog anyway

It was an overall good start to what promises to be a fun project. Next step: go get some silk needles, learn how to use the rolled-hem foot on my lovely Janome, and get some hems on these panels!

Prayer Flag Panels - Symbols

A preview of the Symbols collection of prayer flag panels.

From top to bottom:
Moon Egg
Spiral Love
Infinity Bowl
Spiderweb

Prayer Flag Panels - Animals

A preview of the Animals collection of prayer flag panels.

From top to bottom:
Spider
Bird
Turtle
Snake

Prayer Flag Panels - Goddesses

A preview of the Goddess collection of prayer flag panels.

From top to bottom:
Motherhood
Spiral Orb
Fertile Moon
Earth Mother.