easter egg dyes

it's pretty obvious i am a paper junkie. every time i go to Flax, a local art store with an amazing selection of handmade papers, i never leave without at least a few sheets of handmade papers. i often get them on sale, for a dollar or two. but sometimes my papers just sit there and i don't use them much.

in the the current issue of somerset life spring 09, connie govea stuart has a beautiful article on a simple idea: dying ribbon and papers with easter egg dyes.

so i had a fun time dipping my handmade papers into the dyes. i dyed paper that had strings embedded in it, lace with beading, coffee filters and anything else i could get my hands on. i liked seeing how the colors varied depending on which kind of paper/surface was being dyed.



next year, i will definitely stock up on easter egg dyes after easter is over!

making art in cafes

a few weeks ago, i had a fun time meeting up with another atcsforall friend, Sunny. we both live in san francisco and i thought it would be fun to meet in a cafe and make some art. we ended up staying there for nearly 3 hours! and our table of course was the messiest one compared to everyone else's. they were doing homework or on their laptops. i don't think they were having as much fun as sunny and i were.

we both brought supplies, sunny shared her distress ink pads and pastels which were fun to use. i brought silky crayons and lots of magazine papers and other ephemera for us to play with. I loved seeing her art journal in person.

Making art outside my attic room is definitely interesting. i am often limited in terms of supplies, but being out of the studio sometimes makes me see the stuff i use in a different way, or i improvise. i use ONLY the things around me instead of shuffling the piles of papers in my room.



and making art with a new friend is great too because there's instant feedback and ideas. it's this back and forth thing as we encourage one another and if we're stuck i like that another person can see view the piece with a different perspective.