Look What I Can Do...

I am meeting with a buyer for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts next week, which means new MASHULU items are on the horizon!  I'm looking to post new bags as soon as next weekend...it's also the weekend following my birthday.  Yippee!  Here's a sneaky peek...

the CHAMPAGNE clutch

I finally took the time to take relatively decent photos of a couple of dolls I've made.  The first one is for an art trade with one of the undergraduate students I met here at NSU.  She had this painting that I loved but had trouble pricing it.  She saw one of my dolls and I offered a trade.  Of course, she picked my fave so I offered to make one similar for her.  I have not titled it yet, but it is inspired by corset piercing.  I think I may have shown y'all the original before, but these pics are better than what I posted before:

In case you were wondering, I made the stand myself...in the future I think I will paint them white though.  I also made the jump rings myself because at the time I couldn't find any the right size.  I originally used some of doll artist Patti Culea's patterns but I have since tweaked them a bit to make them my own.  These are about 21" tall, not including the stand.  The larger ones I'm working on will be a bit over 36"! I'm exited at the possibilities a larger "canvas" will afford me.

Here's the one I made for my art trade:

All of the fabrics used to make both dolls were hand dyed and printed by me.  I think I'm coming along nicely, don't you?

SEW Inspired 6.1.2011

Hello folks!  I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend and that you took the time to remember our service men and women who have fallen while answering the call of duty as well as the ones who currently serve.

I'm still working on dolls as part of my solo graduate exhibition.  I know the show is going to be at least a year away, but I find myself thinking about it all the time...trying to find the perfect venue, how I'm going to set up, how many people will be at my opening, and what I'm going to wear.  Folks, it feels like I'm planning a wedding.  The way I stay locked up in my studio, it may very well be the closest thing to a wedding I will have!

At any rate, I wanted to share with you the work of an inspiring fashion designer named Andrew Yang.  He makes these fabulous fashion rag dolls. They really are quite amazing!  He makes the bodies out of cotton muslin and hand paints the faces.  Then he dresses them in all kinds of fashions straight from famous designer runways using sumptuous fabrics and trims.  He calls them Kouklitas.  Take a look:

MFA Monday 1/31/2011

I now realize why all of my friends that attended HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) seem to have so much hustle and drive.  I promise you I am getting a crash course in extreme persistence!  I spent the better part of yesterday LITERALLY running paperwork around campus. I've decided to move into on campus housing until I complete my degree. Financially and academically it makes the most sense.  The hoops I had to go through were somethin' else though! All the while I'm thinking: "are these different offices not connected by fax?" Luckily I had the presence of mind to get some Orthopedic inserts for my shoes which had me walking pretty close to normal speed.  One more hoop to jump through today and I will be set.  So I said all of that just to say: Here's my Monday post...on Tuesday...again.

I tried my hand at screen printing last week...I love! I used the screen painting technique.  For my first experiment I made a design loosely patterned after a microscopic image of skin cells, which I thought would be appropriate since my work was first inspired by modified skin.

First I drew out my design on paper:

I put my screen (that I made myself) on top of the design and painted the design onto my screen with screen painting fluid.

After that dried I applied screen filler. After that dried I used cold water to rinse away the areas where the screen drawing fluid was applied.  I let that dry and then I was ready to roll.  My first boo-boo came when I forgot that I read somewhere about having to have a different mesh to use paint with glitter in it. Oops...had to re-wash the screen and let it dry again, as the flecks from the metallic paint I was using COMPLETELY clogged my screen.  Subsequent passes got lighter and lighter because of the clogging.

Using my Jacquard fabric paints, I mixed up a deep teal color and took another stab at it:

SUCCESS! I am SOOO getting into this fabric re-design stuff!  Next I want to try the photo-emulsion technique, which allows for more sharp details like lettering and stuff like that.  I once thought it was a technique that required too much equipment, but I found an awesome , low-tech tutorial here.

Well, I went on to mix up a deep plum color and made a few passes with that.  Then I layered it with sheets of cotton cheesecloth that I hand dyed.  I am going to use this fabric to make another art doll, this time using the "cut away" treatment that I used on the clutch I showed you in a previous post.  Here are the parts, pre-snip:

There's a layer of pinkish cheesecloth on top of a paprika colored cheesecloth, on top of the cotton that I screen printed my design on.  I used cheesecloth so that the pieces wouldn't get too bulky and hard to turn right side out.  Also, these layers are going to shred beautifully.

Of course I'll post pics when I'm done...