Beautiful Rhode Island

Zipped over to Rhode Island to visit my friend, Linda, for a week. She told me her husband was going out of town and did I want to come? Yeah, duh! We had a lot of fun together. We decided first off that we wanted to create Garden angels, which somehow we started calling our Garden Druids. Pretty much we worked on them almost the whole week (a little bit on them every day and then running out to shop, eat, beach it, etc. ) So it was a nice combo of doing a variety of things. We used a lot of organic items on them found at the beach or things we'd been saving "for just the right project". 

Here's mine at home in her new spot on the back porch: 

We hit the beach a few times looking for treasures, driftwood and taking pictures of the wildlife, rock stacking : 

Watched an Osprey momma feeding her crew

We also made our own upcycled dream catchers: 

and did some dyeing:

and lastly, you know i like my critters. they were to be seen everywhere!

we made the most of our time while enjoying art, friendship, cocktails, beautiful weather, nature and wildlife. couldn't have asked for a nicer more spontaneous vacation!

dyeing with Judy Gula

On Saturday I drove to Scarsdale, NY to partake in a dyeing class with Judy Gula as part of Art-is-You's summer tour of Art in the Garden. This class was about learning how to dye colors in layers versus "precision dyeing". We spent the day learning various ways and techniques in working with dyes. I've done some amateur dyeing on my own, so i had a few troubleshooting questions. There was one technique that we did that i really enjoyed that involved the use of chopsticks. I see me using that one in the future for an upcoming class where I plan on dyeing all the fabric needed to complete a project that I will be teaching in California, May 2012. (more info on that soon enough!) After rinsing and drying all my dyed fabrics, I decided that the pieces I loved the most, were fabrics that were quite textured, like old table cloths and a chenille bedspread.

Judy also discussed "rusting" fabrics - something that i was highly interested in. i had attempted to do it before with minimal results (turns out I wasn't doing it correctly). however, after following her directions, results were still iffy. so i'm thinking variables like the type of material, the age of the material and the type of rusted item being used as a source, will affect the outcome. my best rusting results came from an old piece of rusted ceiling tile.

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in other news:


today was tucker's last day of school until September when he begins the adult education program (usually he will attend school during the summer as well). Dillon is graduating on Wed and Thursday I am leaving for Roanoke, to visit good friend, Lesley Venable. she's arranged for a few of our Nags Head compadres to come over for dinner on Saturday while i am visiting - so that will be fun!