By popular demand! The Cosmic Cafe teleclass series!

Beginning November 18, join me and the friendly tribe of Enchanted Lifers for an amazing experience in honing your manifestation skills on a whole new, more efficient level…

The Cosmic Cafe: Your Enchanted Life Manifestation Catalyst

Click here to learn everything about the teleclass, including the Fr*ee Sampler class I’m offering on Monday, November 1, where you can get a taste of some of the tools we’ll be exploring in the full class.

We’ll be placing our orders with The Cosmic Waitress! C’mon! The kitchen is hoppin’!

Questions?  Click here to email me.

Announcing a new teleclass! “Your Enchanted Home”

Starting September 22 and running for 4 consecutive Wednesdays, I am offering a dee-lish tele-seminar called Your Enchanted Home: Transform Your Space to Support Who You Are -- and Who You're Becoming.

It’s chock-full of fun, powerful and sweet experiential exercises to amp up the spiritual/energetic nutrition quotient in your home.

We’ll play with tools such as: Feng shui, design psychology & floor plan flow dynamics, therapeutic color, letting go of stuff, energy clearing, guided imagery, collaging, journaling and so much more, including, most importantly, your OWN intuition!

Check out all the details here and sign up before September 12 to be eligible for the Early Bird discount.

Commissioned Hand-Dyed Improv Quilt is DONE!

Ta-da!!  Here is the finished hand-dyed improv quilt that my friend and mentor Katie Hendricks commissioned recently.  I got to hand-deliver it to her in Santa Barbara this past weekend and she squealed with delight!

The quilting is done in wavy organic diagonals to enhance the motion of the design.

It measures approximately 60 x 65 inches, and is made with organic cottons and silks, hand-dyed with natural dyes by ME and my hunny Ken. The teal-blue border fabric is the only “non-conformer”: a gorgeous multi-hued commercial Carolina Chambray by Robert Kaufman.

Showing off! Naturally-dyed, hand-painted/stamped silk scarf

Here are two images of this fab scarf – my first experimental foray into stamping and painting on silk.  This scarf is one of the Habotai silks Ken and I hand-dyed recently using natural dyes – in this case, marigold, tesu and indigo. The indigo was layered on using an ancient Shibori technique.

Click either image to enlarge.

I’m showing you the enhanced photo image (left) as well as the original (right).  The enhanced image shows the details of the paint detail better; the original shows the true colors of the scarf better.

This scarf has been sold, but I am taking orders for our next creative dye weekend here at Casa Encantada.  Let me know if you’d like to commission a custom creation! 

Prices ranges from $30 to $60. Just to give you an idea, this one sold for $45.  Scarves measure 13 x 56 inches, a perfect length for a variety of draping approaches. The weight is perfect for summer or winter wear. It has a beautiful drape and flow, along with a lustrous and luxurious shine.

Email me at claire@enchantedstudio.net or give me a call at (520) 444-1847 (Pacific Time).

Hand-dyed/hand-painted organic silk scarves forthcoming!

Here’s a sneak preview of some of the many organic silk scarves Ken and I hand-dyed using natural dyes.  Many of them will also have surface design elements added – you can see the scarf on the very top has been stamped.  Tres fun!

Once we’ve finished them all, I’ll photograph them individually and get them up for sale on my Enchanted Studio website!  I’ll keep ya posted!

A paper mock-up of the hand-dyed improv quilt

I wanted to get a sense of where this process might be taking me, so I took photos of the four panels and printed them out, then cut into them, rearranged and taped the pieces back together.  Voila!  Finished size will be 60 x 65 inches. (This little mock-up is about 14 x 14”.)  Hmmm…   I LOVE it.  I wonder, though, about the yellow vertical line center-ish…?

Improv quilting – preparing the panels for subcutting

These are the panels for a new quilt I have been working on.  They are approximately 34 x 30 inches.  Today, I am preparing to layer and subcut to see what new compositions and colorplay emerge. The final layout of the quilt will not look much like what you see here…

With the exception of the dark teal and one of the deep apricots which are commercially dyed shot cotton chambrays, ALL the other fabrics are hand-dyed organic silks – some organic cottons, too – that Ken and I dyed here.

 

Quote of the Week – July 26, 2010

"We cause as much pain by taking offense, as by giving it."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

A toast to Kirby the Kitty

After 2-and-a-half years of the exquisite pleasure of Kirby’s presence in our lives, he peacefully transitioned into pure consciousness yesterday morning at 11:30. 

At age 7, he succumbed to lupus, after enjoying a two-year remission in which he happily ruled his kingdom here at Casa Encantada, vigorously scaling 6-foot adobe walls in a single bound and luxuriating in a diet of grain-free roasted bison and wild salmon – not too shabby!

We loved his sweet, laid-back royal demeanor, his easy rhythms and his open affection for our dawg Roxy. Feeling waves of love, sadness and soul-deep appreciation…

.

 

Celebrating my 5000th blog visitor!

Whoo-hoo!  This blog has reached a fun milestone – my 5000th unique visitor!  From 72 different countries!  And this is my 220th post.  And I’ve re-designed it a couple of times – here are the three generations…

Thanks for commenting, following, reading along -- and for your all-around support, good vibes and conviviality!  The “blogosphere” has proven to be yet another creative outlet where we get to connect around many shared passions.  Salut to all of us on this strange and wonderful frontier!

Afternoon relief

A monsoon cloud sweeps through violently, leaving a 20-degree temperature drop in its’ wake.

Bastille Day in “our” little French village

 

Ahhh… I feel so happy knowing that experiences like this are in our future!  Roquebrun, France, in the Languedoc region. (Photo credit: Campotel de l’Orb Facebook Page).

 

Feux d'artifice à Roquebrun le 13 juillet 2010!

 

 

 

Quote of the Week – July 19, 2010

"When you start working, everybody is in your studio -- your past, your friends, your enemies, the art world, your ancestors, your inner critic, and above all, your own ideas -- all are there.  But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left, completely, gloriously alone.  Then if you're lucky, even you leave."

--Philip Guston quoting John Cage in The Artist's Mentor, by Ian Jackman

Semi-final palette for new art quilt commission

Though, we did remove the grays and browns, and add a teal and a deep apricot!

These are all my OWN naturally hand-dyed organic silks and cottons. (Well, mine and Ken’s!)

Top row: heavy raw organic silks; middle row: organic cotton muslins; bottom row: is a mix of mid-weight organic Fuji silk broadcloth and heavy raw organic silks. SHLURP!

TODAY is the day I begin cutting into all this lusciousness and start sewing!  I am both excited and a bit nervous!

Ahhh… breathe…

YUM!!

Exploring surface design

Another couple of days of our two-week fabric-dyeing intensive was spent exploring and sampling the huge world of surface design.  We took our layered hand-dyed fat quarters and played with adding even MORE layers!

We played with stamps, stencils, silkscreens, resists, discharges, dyes, paints and more.  Iron, indigo, bleach, and more. Here are a few examples!  Click to enlarge any image.

The applications are endless, but I see myself making some gorgeous scarves – (photos of a few of those to come soon in a separate post).  Is an etsy.com shop in my future?  Hmmmm…

Wild hand-dyed silk samplers

 

This was one of the fun things Ken and I did during our two-week fabric-dyeing intensive with Gail Denton at the Natural Dye Studio in Boulder in June!  

We spent a couple of days exploring the interplay of the dyes with layering, double and triple-dipping, folding, fanning, tying, clamping and otherwise torturing the silks.

These samplers are fat-quarter-yard size (18 x 22 inches).  Click on any image to enlarge.

The idea here is that these techniques can be used to make silk scarves and/or to cut up and make into quilts, and/or to create a base for layers of surface design – painting, stamping, screen printing, stenciling, surface dyeing using a thickening agent, etc.  Some photos of THAT step to come tomorrow.

In the meantime, vote for your favorites!

Also watch for a blogpost later this week devoted to just our silk scarves.