A Lovely, Quiet Holiday Gift Gallery

The annual Pink House Holiday Gift Gallery is open on Fridays from 11am to 8pm and Saturdays from 11am to 5pm through December 23rd, as well as when the Open signs are out or by appointment. Lots of "doing" for friends in need this year, so call me when you can make it to the Pink House. I'd love to see you. 

And so many wonderful gifts! Many by talented artist friends, some made by me, all carefully selected to help you find the Special Something for your Special Someone! And I am happy to ship to you or your dear ones!

Pilllows and Plant Prints 

The Eco Prints Department

The Gift Solution - a Gift Certificate for a workshop or scarf or tiny birdhouse or .....

Wool Hats by Ann Clarke I

Wool Hats by Ann Clarke II

Crepe de Chine Silk Scarves by Pat Pauly

Colorful Linen Pillows by Pat Pauly

Rustic Pillows by Cris

Fragrant Candles

Little Framed Eco Prints

Zen Rocks by Chad Pattison

Lots more for Heart and Home.  Hope to see you soon! 

New Directions

 Last week I delivered a bunch of my new eco printed silk scarves to the Lake Placid Center for the Arts downtown gallery (soon to be called Gallery 46). I've learned a lot about eco printing (a.k.a. botanical contact printing) in the past year. I also recently learned about ColorHue dyes. What a great combination!
 

Here is Jon Donk, wonderful Gallery 46 manager, holding a couple of my pillows with silk covers. I love the string resist marks and the eucalyptus on the left pillow; the right one was printed with oak leaves then shifted into another dimension with ColorHue dye. And you can see a lovely mauve scarf on  the counter, also transformed with the dye. I'll tell you all about the dyes and how I discovered them another time, as I relive my wonderful stay in St. Petersburg, Florida in March. So much creativity and energy there!

Below are some eco printed cards I made during my stay. I dipped the whole cards in the leftover turquoise dye (from that pillow above). It not only gave a nice light color on the white card - it intensified the original pigments on the card. Magical Stuff!

Eco Printing from the Shoreline

A significant portion of my childhood was spent on this beach at Ft. DeSoto Park near St. Petersburg, Florida. Each winter when visiting my mom, we spend some time there. It's always a highlight of my stay.

This year, the mysteries of printing with plant pigments is always on my mind. And I had read recently that sea water makes a good mordant for printing on cotton. The photo above indicates it might be a good mordant for sand as well. Do you see the brown pigment bleeding from the mangrove leaf?

My shoreline walk that windy, cool day yielded lots of mangrove leaves washed up on the beach, along with some seaweeds. I used them as I found them - with a salty, sandy coating straight form the sea.

The seaweed (Sargassum, I believe) printed beautifully on seawater-soaked watercolor paper that was steamed in a packet, along with the mangrove leaves. I love the experiments!

Eco Printing Experiment #...

Cherry leaves on watercolor paper cooked between tin can lids with red cabbage leaves and a little vinegar in the simmering water bath.

Here are some recent eco printing experiments done in my studio with frozen plant material on watercolor paper. The prints here are a few of the many successes and failures. Since these, I have done much more, and right now I am about return to my studio after 10 days in Florida. And I have made some technical and creative leaps here that I could not possibly have made at home. So, my next several posts will take you along on my ride!

I also want to say that I have many online artists to thank. In the upcoming posts, I'll be sharing their links to blogs and websites that have been so valuable to me. The huge world wide artists community is fantastic, don't you think?!

Sweet gum (Liquidamber styraciflua) leaf.

Resulting print, with no mordants or other additions.

Settling into Winter

 The Holiday Gift Gallery is winding down, and soon my artist friends will have their lovely things that did not sell back with them. And lots of things did sell. It was a good season. I am filled with gratitude for all wonderful things that have happened at my Pink House since I opened in July.

January is always my time to take stock of the past year, to settle into the shelter of home and the inner life, and to dream about what can happen next.

While I dive into all of that, here is a table runner I made with one of my ecoprints and some gold thread. More of these lovely and practical fabric works will appear soon in the Pink House Gallery, but this one is going to  friend.

Happy Holiday Gift Gallery!

The gallery is filled with colorful handmade lovelies made by my artist friends (and a few by me, at long last) and after some errands, my open signs will be out. For today, the bookkeeping, labeling, and other undercover activities will take a back seat to getting my "bouquet" of little balsam firs and white birch branches out in the garden arranged, lighted, and decorated with my new pink Christmas balls. (What color did you THINK I'd choose?!)

Below are some of the items in the gallery, and please go to my Holiday Gift Gallery page above to see more. I am gradually adding more to that page, so check back again. Prices range from $10 to $75 - just right!

Jean Poole's 3D fabric bags. $15 -$25.

Linda Smyth's colorful note cards. $15 for pkg of 4.

Lake Champlain painting by Linda Smyth - for your camp! $65.

Linda Smyth's watercolors in painted frames. $45 each.

Fanciful Birdie House by Lynne Taylor. $49.

Painted Box with sliding lid by Lynne Taylor. $35.

 And if you really can't decide, you can buy a gift certificate for any amount, to be used for an art class or some artwork. She will be grateful!

 

The Best Surface Design Exhibit in the Adirondacks!

Okay, as far as I know, it's the only surface design exhibit. But no matter. There is a lot of beautiful fabric in the gallery, with information to tell you how it was done. It is my personal mission to explore fabric and mixed media art in my community, with an educational component, and this exhibit has been loads of fun! Many "Wow!s" and "I want to try that!s".

Since mid-October, my gallery has been filled with the color and texture of unique, hand-dyed, printed art fabrics. Have you heard the term "shibori-dyed" but aren't quite sure what that means? See Susan Hahn's mini exhibit of "how it's made" shibori samples and her finished artwork.

Shibori samples by Susan Hahn

For lots of images of screen printed, direct dyed, snow dyed, eco printed, stamped, batiked, shibori dyed fabrics (among others) and more information, check out the page above "In the Pink House Gallery." If you want to see it all, come on in soon - up through Sunday, November 22nd. But the information will stay on my gallery page, so enjoy!

"I'm an Eco Printing Novice"

If there was a T-shirt announcing "I'm an Eco Printing Novice," I imagine I could truthfully wear it for a very long time. I've admired the results of the process for a long time but I didn't try it until I saw the wonderful results in person at The Maine Event in September.

 I documented my first go pretty thoroughly. The second one too. All of these were done with with cotton and linen, which required a premordant soak with soda ash. The first one got some ferrous sulfate as well; the second with soda ash alone. Both dye baths included ferrous sulfate. Let me know what you think!

Peony leaves on cotton

Oak leaves on vintage linen

Oak leaves between linen layers, ready to roll on the birch stick.

Bundles in the dye bath with ferrous sulfate

A bundle just from the dye bath. See the lovely lines under the string that resisted the iron?

Unwrapping a print with oak leaves. The print is on upper half.

A print with peony leaves. They worked beautifully!