Saturday, June 30, 2012

O.C. Trolly


What a great way to spend a Friday evening!  Several months ago my card group gals and I decided that we'd book the Orange County (O.C.) Wine Trolly for Friday June 29th instead of playing cards that night.  The O.C. Wine Trolley is a combination of a historical tour and food and wine tasting, with a little bit of a real estate sales pitch tossed in by Al Ricci, the owner of Ricci Realty.  Here's how it works.  Each guest reserves a spot for about $50.  Several different wines are provided for tasting and roughly 10 - 12 restaurants participate on each tour (I believe they vary, so each tour may be a little different).  The trolley leaves at 8 p.m. sharp and the tour ends about 2 - 2.5 hours later.  The participating restaurants donate their food and all proceeds from the ticket sales go to the Orange Senior Center.  So you get to enjoy the food, wine, and history all while feeling charitable.

Last night the food samples were from El Ranchito, Felix Cafe, Ruby's, Citrus City Grille, Beach Pit BBQ, Old Towne Grinder, Zitos Pizza, The Bruery, Francoli, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and more.  Samples included a turkey grinder sandwich, salami and cheese, delicious Cuban rice with chicken from Felix, pasta from Francoli, beef and mashed potatoes from Citrus City Grille.  So much food that I had to pass on the last sample.   In addition to the food, we also were treated to a sampling of several wines from Cupcake Winery from Livermore, CA.  Each wine was introduced by Shaun who taught us about where the wine was from, where the varietal originated in France, and what we could expect to taste.  Best of all, the last stop on the tour is Rod's - where they carry all the wines featured on the trolley and were selling them at a discounted price to tour participants.  I bought two bottles of a delicious red blend called Red Velvet.

The tour itself was fascinating and we learned so much about Old Town Orange.  We drove through neighborhoods ogling at the historic and well cared for, old homes.  Al mentioned that there are only 13 on the market right now, most over $1M in asking price.  Several of the old homes we passed have been used in movies including "Big Mama's House" Al was interactive with the trolley guests with his guessing games and stumped most of us on more than one occasion.

Fun, fun evening and I'd do it again or rent out the whole trolley for yourself and 25 friends!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Nuno Felting Workshop at Grauhaus


I was in my element teaching nuno felting to a full class at Grauhaus in the historic Crossroads of the World Shopping Center in Hollywood, CA on Sunday June 24, 2012.  It was clear that everyone throughly enjoyed immersing themselves in this creative process and came away fulfilled with a gorgeous, unique, and very one of kind nuno felted scarf.  

I am excited to say that this was just the first of hopefully many more teaching ventures for me at Grauhaus.  As a member of the newly formed artist's collective, with Claudia Grau and about a dozen other women artists, we plan to do some exciting venues including artists' receptions, craft dinners, fund raisers and creative workshops.  It is going to be a new and exciting way to do business, network with the community, craft together and reach out.  Click HERE to learn more.

Below is a short movie of the 6/24/12 NUNO FELTING WORKSHOP.  
Click the bottom right to view it on full screen.




Tuesday, June 19, 2012

More Textile Adventures - Nuno Felting the Batiked Fabric

Two weeks ago my friend Antoinette and I got together in her beautiful backyard to batik some silk fabric which we would later nuno felt.  For more information on the batik process click HERE.  Yesterday we got together at my house for the nuno felting portion of our textile adventure.  I had hand dyed some wool roving and other silks to coordinate with the batiks we did.

I started off with a piece of the batiked silk 132" long by 19" wide and after the felting process, the finished scarf was 89" long by 10 1/2" wide.  I am so pleased with all the texture, the color and the drape.  This scarf is beautiful and so different on both sides.  The one side mainly shows the batik fabric texturized from the wool roving that was placed on the other side.  The reverse side shows all the other elements I added in - the wool roving, the silks, ribbons, cut up and repurposed UFO knitting projects, etc.


Here's the finished scarf/shawl

Antoinette with our batiked silk fabric
Hand dyed silks and wool roving added to the batiked fabric

Lay out for the scarf.  It shrunk 33% in length and 45% in width.



Below are a few more pics of the finished scarf/shawl which can be worn in so many fun ways.








Monday, June 18, 2012

Fun with a sample photo


Today's Challenge in the Beyond Layers class was to download the sample image of Kim Klassen's lilacs and then process the photo to our liking….add some texture, perhaps a little type....  
This is Kim Klassen's sample image


This is my version processed in Photoshop.  Lots of texture and adjustment layers.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Book Spine Poetry

Who knew that we can all be poets when we play book spine poetry.  I got this inspiration from the Day 42 challenge in my Beyond Layers on-line class.  The idea is to make a poem using the titles of books displayed on their spines.   Once you get going, you'll want to do a bunch.

I think these are kind of fun.  I particularly like the last one.

Rhodesian Ridgebacks
Speak
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Under the Banner of Heaven.


Wabi Sabi
Gorillas in the Mist
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Disgrace
The Freedom Writers Diary.


The Negative
Gorillas in the Mist
Barefoot in Paris
Speak
On Beauty.



An Invitation to Fly
Under the Banner of Heaven
In Search of Excellence.




Paradise
Blessings
To Be a Jew
Barefoot in Paris
In Search of Excellence

Sunday, June 10, 2012

An afternoon of batiking

My girlfriend Antoinette and I just realized that we've known each other for almost 18 years already.  Wow, where does the time go!  Antoinette is an artist who excels in everything artistic from painting to sculpture to interior design to creating the most spectacular awarding winning cakes you've  ever seen.  Click HERE for a video on a DeLorean car cake that she did for a fund raiser.  Recently she taught her grandsons how to batik on muslin which made me think that there would be a lot of synergy between batiking silk fabric and then nuno felting it.  So we made a date to spend the day batiking and will soon follow up with a day of nuno felting our batiked fabrics. 

 Stay tuned for a possible workshop combining batiking and nuno felting.

Here's a video of us batiking our hearts out.  Click the button on the bottom right to view it full screen.



Here are a few of our finished batiks on silk fabric  - china silk on the left, silk organza on the right.