2013 - my year of new beginnings

2012 was a year of a lot of ups and downs. I married my best friend of 10 years. Our beloved dog, Scarlet, passed away. My dad was diagnosed with heart disease and we just found out had been having frequent heart attacks. And I found out that I have an overactive ovary which is causing a lot of havoc on my system physically and emotionally.

2013 will be a year of great change, growth and challenges for everyone including myself.

I plan to be more creative in every aspect.
I have always aspired to write a great short fantasy book.

I plan to create at least one small artwork every month. I haven't been super creative in a really long time. So what I am putting out will be more of creative exercises.

Diet - everyone has this in their resolutions....especially for me it's serious with my father having heart disease and finding out that its pretty rampant in my dads side of the family as well as my mothers side. I vow to take care of myself physically so that I can be there for my husband and our family of 4 legged kids.

I also plan to do something everyday that makes me happy. Even its a little tiny thing. Like today I am writing in my blog that I have not maintained in months.

I have a huge book queue that I look at everyday and say to myself.....I really should read tonight in bed instead of watching movies on my iPad. So I will also attempt to read a book every month. My sister and my dad read a new book about every 3-4 days. I know I am not ready for that big of a commitment....

I will also take the dog out for a walk everyday. Even when Im exhausted after work. He is a very special dog who has become my doggie love of my life after his sister passed away.

And lastly I will make every effort to make my husband remember why he fell in love with me.

Happy New Years!

Flowers in my 'hood.

Everyone who knows me knows I love flowers, fauna and foliage. Even dead dried foliage. Foliage is kinda my thing....although Ive killed most of the plants in our house....

I often take photos of the flowers & fauna in our neighborhood when I am out walking my dogs.
Spring has sprung!!

A little tribute to the color of the year.....

Hand made & hand colored paper

I love paper. I spent some time hand making paper and then hand painting and dying it. I use papyrus and abaca for the base, newsprint as binder and also onion skins and some seeds for texture.
I prefer windsor newton inks, you can water  them down, add salt, rubbing alcohol and get some great effects. For many of these I wet the papers first then drop the inks on them. The paper is naturally porous so the it draws  the inks in different directions.

More from the early days....Burberry inspired

This was a collaborative project from my textiles 3 class that was for Burberry. And yes they did purchase one of my designs. 

My color story was turquoise blue, bright yellow, bright red, a faded peachy orange and black. You will see that most of my projects have the primary colors used in them in one way or another. 

I hand drew all my flowers in illustrator. I created the plaid in illustrator as well and then burned the images into the screens. 

Texture and Pattern: Wood

Nature walk in Monterrey. I saw some really beautiful patterns and textures tree in stumps and dead wood that had been withered by wind and time and worms.

I can see a great repeat type pattern in this, perhaps for a very graphic black and white pillow or large wing back chair...

Trying a new thing here.....Im going to try and start posting more regularly! What a concept...also will try to post more inspiration style photos - like found patterns during the early part of the week, maybe mid week florals and Friday color inspiration...weekends I will reserve for how to's and my "early years" textiles. Everyones gotta start somewhere right!

So here it is......

More from the "early years"....
These are from my textiles 2 class. The concept was to create a textile collection based off of a movie or book. I chose one of my fave movies Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Kill from the amazing Russ Meyer...starring Tura Santana...if you haven't seen  this film go immediately and watch it.

Here's how I did the collection. I always ALWAYS start with a mood or theme board. I have to say I make pretty awesome boards...
I paused the movie when ever a still of a face came on or when a fight seen came on. There were a lot of fight scenes. I mean a lot. I took polaroids of the stills with my old school polaroid camera, and by old school I mean circa 1999. I then blew up the polaroids on a b/w copier, then copied them on velum in a b/w copier. Kinkos hated me I'm sure during this time, but I know they made a killing off me... With the b/w copies you get a lot of really good levels of pos & neg space. And thus making really cool images.

In this set I threw bleach on a black fabric then poured water on it and watched the magic happen. The bleach bled out more and created almost levels of color. After they dried I printed some of the rust patterns on them. 

This one is bleach then discharge. You get a lot of great levels of faded out color. 

I took woven cotton spandex and wrapped it around barb wire and rusty objects in my back yard and left it there for weeks while continuing to work on the other parts of the collection. The rust patterns on their own could have been an entire collection.

A lot of my textiles were created in my back yard and bathtub, I always have plenty of buckets in the garage for when I get a crazy itch to bleach or dye something. 

More from the early days....

I was still discovering new techniques, refining my craft and generally just playing around. I love color and still love it today. These are more from my early works in textiles 1 class. Discharge technique on stretch hot pink pique.
Enjoy!

From my early collections

This first collection was inspired by Dr. Suess. I had just started my first semester in textile school and knew nothing about pigments, techniques or even the process. In this first collection I tried my hand at discharge and quickly found out what types of fabrics are receptive to this technique. As soon as I finished this project, I knew that I had found my passion of textiles and surface design.


The grey stripes are discharge on silk blend. The black Suess flowers are standard screen printing inks.

The below is pigment discharge on a cotton blend poplin. 

Discharge on cotton blend poplin. 

Grid Pattern

I love lines made into a grid pattern and filled in with color.