Sue Bleiweiss

velvet dreams

Hand dyed silk velvet journal...






















More photos of the inside in the shop here.

The velvet I used for the dream journal above was a piece that I bought from Joggles.com I decided that I wanted to make a few more journals using silk velvet so I went through my stash and came up with a piece of white silk velvet that I had bought a while back.  I tore it into fat quarter sized pieces and painted each piece:




















 




















































I am very happy with these pieces and I can't wait to use them!

Belle Armoire article!

I can't even tell you what a thrill it is for me to see myself in the pages of Belle Armoire!  I just got the May/June issue yesterday:

and when I turned to page 22...


The article is all about painting and writing on fabric with Stewart Gill paints.  I am so happy with the photography and the layout.  They did such a nice job with it!

Weekend projects & a give away!

Well I don't know what the weather is like where you are but here on the East Coast there is no sign of spring as far as I can see.  So in need of some bright colors to ward off the chill in the air I decided to make my own pile of spring colors...

Lesson 5/6 of the Creative Mixed Media Journaling Techniques includes a section on my method for easy no fuss fabric dyeing and these are the samples from that.   That definitely feels much more springlike than the snowflakes falling outside my window!

I also worked with some lace:

and some yummy silk velvet fat quarters:

Lesson 5/6 is now in the hands of my official lesson tester and 7/8 is well underway.  Something I'm working on for that lesson:

yup that's right, a textured tissue surface for the outside of a journal.   Lesson 7/8 of this new class is going to include a section on how to create these surfaces and turn them into journals.    I'll be making an announcement in the next few weeks about when registration for this class will open.  I originally anticipated not being able to run it until September but it looks like I'll be ready to run it in June (not to worry though, it will also still run in September too).  Stay tuned for more details on that to come.

And now the good stuff - let's do a giveaway!  It's been a while since I've given something away.  Leave me a comment on this post between now and Wednesday and I'll choose 3 names from all the comments.  Those three people will get a goodie bag that includes a piece of the silk velvet that I just dyed along with some of the lace.

Good luck!

What I did this past weekend...

Well I spent a good amount of time playing with paint and making up some new painted backgrounds to use in my journals...

And got a couple of new textured surfaces ready...

This photo doesn't do this surface justice, there's some wonderful layers of copper & golds in this.  Unfortunately it's gray and gloomy here today so photo taking is a bit of challenge.

and a surface will become the "purple haze" journal:

I've also got several new brown paper leather journals in the works too but those won't be ready for a couple of days yet.  I also spent some time hanging out with a new etsy group that I joined:  The BBEST (that's the group name)  team!  You can find a list of all the shops in the group here.  There's some incredibly talented people in the group who make some fabulous things.   Check out these treasuries for just a few highlights of the groups members:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1743
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1829
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1849
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1819

Have a great time shopping!

More surfaces

Been playing a bit more with tissue paper this weekend...

This next one was done with liquid watercolors which I am growing quite fond of working with.

While all that was drying I was poking around in the upstairs fabric stash closet and came across this piece:

I did this piece quite some time ago using a shibori pole wrapping technique and then stuffed it in the closet and forgot about it.  I think it will make a great piece to use for a sketchbook so it's now been moved to the work table.   Speaking of shibori, Linda Stokes has a great article in issue 3 of Fibre&Stitch about shibori.   She's created some gorgeous fabrics using this technique.

Hope your all having a good weekend.  It's too cold here to go outside so  I'm heading back into the studio to start working on the samples for the Mixed Media Journaling Techniques workshop that's scheduled to start in late September.  I'll have a full class description with lessons in a week or so stay tuned for lots of samples over the next couple of months!

Journal jacket

Now when I said there would be no more journals I didn't mean forever!  I just meant that I was done with the class samples.  Trust me on this, you'll be seeing a lot more journals this year.  I am pretty sure that the exploration of journal making and how to use traditional bookbinding techniques with mixed media and fiber is going to be my primary focus for 2008. 

But that's not all that I'm working on.  I was asked about creating some pieces for Belle Armoire magazine using the journaling on fabric technique that I used for the journals in this post.  Those journals will actually be in the July/August issue of Somerset Studio.  Very excited about that! 

So I decided to use this painting/lettering technique on a jacket. Now these are terrible pictures I know.  It was a gray day and unfortunately I had to box this up and send it off before I could get a better picture but here's a photo of it anyway...

the front:

and the back:

This started as a white denim jacket.  The whole thing was painted with Stewart Gill paints and then when dry I wrote all the text on using a syringe filled with black paint.    The text is actual words but I've only formed the first letter or two of each word so you can't really read what I've written.  I'm very pleased with the way this came out.  Like I said, it's much better in real life than it is in my photos.

and now back into the studio...

Tote bag and some new journals

I used some of that fabric I showed you in my my last post to make this tote bag:

and the other side:

This is one piece of a set of items that I'm working on for a big project.  I'll have more photos for you on that later this week hopefully.

Back in October when I was in Houston at the Quilt Festival with Terri we came across this vendor selling wonderful packages of lace for practically a steal.  So naturally I bought a stack!  I finally pulled them out this week and used some of them for a couple of journals:

Linen&Lace:

and Lavendar&Lace:

You can see the insides of these if you like by visiting the etsy shop.

painting, painting, painting

I've got a couple of big projects brewing in the studio and they all require hand painted and lettered fabric.  So I've been in the studio for the last two days knee deep in canvas and paint.  I used SG True Colour  and Colourise paints on these pieces and I have to tell you these are my new favorite paints.  They are a dream to paint with and even though they come out of the jar fairly thick and you think there's no way they won't make my fabric stiff they don't effect the hand of the fabric at all.  Here's a few finished pieces...

and another...

Both of these are going to get cut up and sewn into some different things.  The top one is for a special project and the second one I think will become a journal or two.  I'll have photos of what they end up being later this week hopefully.  I've got several more painted pieces drying that I painted up using the SG MetalMica paints...

and this one

These are still a little wet but as soon as they're dry they'll get the lettering treatment as well.  both of these have some really wonderful shimmer on the surface which the camera doesn't really pick up (my lack of photography skills don't help either!)

Painting canvas

I decided to take a day off from making journals and broke out my Stewart Gill paints and painted up some canvas pieces...

These paints worked beautifully.  I put a light wash of water on the surface first and then just used a sponge brush to paint on the color.    I used a combination of the Colourise and the True Opaque paints.  The next step for these will be to add some surface design probably in the form of text.  I'm hoping that these pieces become the bases for the collages I will create for Virginia Spiegels Collagemania.

Thanks to everyone whose left a comment on my giveway post so far.  I've gotten a couple of questions that I thought I would post the answers to here.  Several of you asked if I had thought about doing an online class in journal making.  And the answer to that is yes!  I am in the process of developing a class and I am hoping that it will run during the spring session at Joggles.   It's going to cover all aspects of journal making for the textile artist.  We'll look at different ways to bind signatures, embellishments both inside and out, spine options, outside wrap variations, permanent signatures, removable signatures, creating pockets, and a whole lot more.

Just about all of the images and clip art that I used for making the journals came from the Memories of Lifetime series books.  I have almost all of these books (I am just missing the Christmas and the Pets one).  They're excellent books for images and I highly recommend them.

And lastly...if you haven't already don't forget to leave a comment on my previous post to be eligible for the journal giveaway.  I've gotten over 75 comments so I'll be giving away at least 3 journals.  If you've already left a comment then go visit my friend Vicki's blog and check out the very cool version of the 3 drawer box that she created.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

playing with paint

These arrived in yesterdays mail...

Some new Stewart Gill paints and rubber stamps.  I am really enjoying working with these paints!  I managed to get a few paper surfaces painted up this morning...

and...

and a couple of fabric surfaces too:

and one more...

Not sure what the next step is for these surfaces.  I think I will definitely add some stitching to the fabric ones.  The nice thing about these paints is that even though they are quite thick they really don't change the hand of the fabric.  And I notice that they seem to dry very quickly. 

Next up on my list of things to do is some holiday baking!  I'm spending the day in the kitchen tomorrow baking up a storm, one of my favorite ways to spend the day.