Gelli Plate Printing

I just got one of these Gelli printing plates recently and have had a lot of fun so far playing with it.  I never did get around to trying the whole gelatin plate thing where you mix up a batch of thick gelatin and then it kind of breaks down as you make prints.
Everything I learned about the technique but never actually tried is in this great book by Rayna Gillman  I just used all the techniques in the gelatin monoprinting chapter with a Gelli plate instead.  This thing is pretty substantial and durable and seems to be intended for many reuses, although likely not a forever kind of print plate such as a piece of glass.

It's all about layers, this video shows how to do it really clearly.

I'll take pictures of my papers and fabrics and post them soon. But go get yourself one of these things, I bought mine at  Blick Art Materials.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, on the California Highway 1 about 50 miles south of San Francisco.

It was a beautiful windy and sunny day when we were there.

I want to go back and stay at the hostel which is right on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Pacific.

 The lighthouse Fresnel Lens was out for cleaning and repair so we were lucky enough to get to see it up close and personal.

 As you can see, I was fascinated by all 108 of the lenses, their shapes fitted so perfectly,

 the repetition of the shapes,

 lined up and stacked. Color upon color.

 The top looks like a crazy-beautiful spaceship.

 My favorite were all the rainbows thrown around the room, I didn't want to leave!

 Closeup of the window high-up on the lighthouse.

 The lighthouse tower and a chimney in the foreground, where the smoke came up as they burned wood all night to power the steam driven light.

I know, don't look at the sun, but sometimes I can't resist when it's like this.

Cornucopia Of Fun

	Yes that's the name of this blog spelled out in cats.  Which you can do   with any words you choose here.  Thanks to the blogess for once again providing something that I did not know I needed until I saw it on her blog .

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• I'm having sporadic fun over on Pinterest, (thanks Jaye for suggesting it!),  you should definitely check it out if you like :
• remembering pictures
• making collections
• finding inspiring new pictures
• finding inspiring new artists
• being able to find something again and not have to print it out...

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You know that saying to make a new thing a habit to do it for 30 days straight?  Try Chains for keeping track.  It's a cool visual app that is a little customizable and fun to see all those days stacking up in a row.

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If you need to be reminded of how very very small you are, or how very very big you are, you should check out this: It's A Matter Of Scale

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A combination of one of my very favorite bands and one of my very favorite books.  If you like The Decemberists, Infinite Jest, tennis, funny music videos and/or utter catastrophic global thermonuclear war you have to check out this video.
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Another musical treat, listen to some messed-around with songs by Radiohead for free on their website.
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Another app, this time on the iPad, which Maureen recommended as a fellow color lover, a great color matching game, Blendoku (also on android too)

Reasons For Keeping A Visual Journal

Why keeping a visual journal is so important, with thanks to Ricë Freeman-Zachery:

Cherry Bomb

 The cherry tree was in glorious bloom not so long ago.  I wish it lasted longer.

Design Exercise the First

 As part of a new small group I'm a member of, I had to make a small piece incorporating three symbols that each of us chose. I chose a spiral, which surprised no one. The other two members chose a kind of S shape (not-exactly sine wave but close) and a triangle.  We were all recently reading the book
Design By Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design by Maggie Macnab (I highly recommend this book!, It is very well done and thought-provoking), and we adapted some of the ideas about design and pattern into this group exercise.  It was really interesting to see what the other two group members came up with, all three were completely different.

I started out first with a three part background all in greys. I kept the irregular edges of the fabric pieces 'as-is' for visual interest.

The shapes were quilted and drawn in each section, spiral, S-shape and then triangle. I drew the shapes with a fabric marker, and added the dots at all the corners of the triangles because of a pen mistake.  That made me think of architectural style drawings, so I went back and drew over the shapes, adding fig.1, etc.

My original plan was that this would be the background and I'd add additional fabric shapes on top of all this.  But I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point so I stopped there.  This end design turned out to not combine the shapes quite as much as I really wanted to though. I will probably try this exercise again as I found it really useful and I'd like to see what else I could come up with.

Contained Observation

A new quilt that I finished recently, "Contained Observation" (20.5"w x 30.5"h).  I used many of my hand-dyed or painted or marbled fabrics, two of my hand-cut stamps and re-purposed zippers.

Mail surprise

What a nice surprise it was to get such a lovely thing in the mail, a fabric postcard from Virginia Schnalle!  I love having such talented, giving friends.

Trading Up

So the good thing about making ATC's is getting to trade them. 

Angela's, The quote says: 

Now and then

it's good to

pause in our

pursuit of

happiness and

just be happy.

-Guillame Apollinaire

Boy is that ever a good one that I needed to hear!

 I ended up with two from Maureen, these are made with fabric paper and have an addition of small crochet lace.

Rhonda's

 

And a very cute heart one from Virginia

And a last one from Maureen which has all these great transparent fabrics and either printing or silk-screening too, very cool.

March ATC's

 For the March CQFA meeting I managed to make some just-in-time ATC's.  I started out with some discharged and dyed fabric with some added shapes on top.

 A whole lot of stitching later, here's how it looks.  You can see the thing that will be added a bit later, paper lace.

 A little closer up on the stitching, some was straight stitch, some zig zag with variegated rayon thread.

 And here they are once they're chopped up and stitched around the edges.  Sometimes the fun part is deciding where to cut, a sort of  a last step design exercise.

 Closeups of the individual ATC's so you can see how the paper lace looks along with the quilted surface.