Sunday, February 25, 2007

A Little Bit o' Jaz

The other day I was all about showing off my silkscreened shirt and sharing what fun I had creating it. But SOMEbody had to peek in and see if anyone was still out there!

As she made her way to Seattle, this little one first showed up over on Joleen's blog when she landed there with her friends Ginger and Ava, all the way from Hong Kong. Then she made an appearance on Heather's blog. She is a Takara Prima Dolly Ashlette Blythe doll, and by the time she arrived here, I was so excited to meet her! She's even prettier for reals, with lovely long thick hair. She quickly let me know that she wanted to be called Jasmine, or Jaz for short.

Of course Jaz had to sit for her portrait soon after she arrived. I'm not sure she was too thrilled with the setting though. That snow looked a tad cold!

Welcome to my Jaz!

Now Jaz is settling in nicely, and I'm having fun making her all kinds of cute clothes. I told a little fib the other day. I did make her that hat. I sized down a baby hat pattern, and knitted it out of Noro Aurora yarn on size 2 needles. That was my first time using four double-pointed needles. I like the yarn so much I'm now making myself a hoodie sweater out of it. I'll post a picture sometime in the future when the sweater is done.


Warmth for the noggin

I also knitted Jaz this little hoodie sweater, making up the pattern as I went. That was fun! I love the furry trim, but I learned something pretty important when I put it on. Next time, I'll put the snaps and buttons on first, so that all that fuzz doesn't keep getting caught under the thread as I sew!


Warm and snuggly

I've been sewing some clothes too - a striped denim mini skirt and some very skinny jeans. I made all kinds of clothes for my doll when I was a girl, and I had forgotten how fun it was. Methinks this little doll is going to have quite the wardrobe!

Newness

Oooh -lookit me! Since Blogger MADE me change to the new version, I went ahead and took advantage of their new template choices, and got a new banner. Neither one of which I would have done without some help and heavy hinting (!) from Heather. Isn't the banner she made me beautiful? Click on her name here and go check out the banners she can make for your blog. They are all so pretty!

Now that I've had a chance to look around at this new version, I'm getting intrigued by what I can do with my blog. I'll have to play some more...but not tonight. It's getting late and I still have to re-construct that entry that IE ate up for me.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Frustration

Well, I HAD another post all ready to go last night. I just had to add the pictures when IE crashed on me for the second(!) time and I lost the whole thing. By then it was too late to reconstruct the post yet another time, so I'll try again tonight. Cross your fingers! It's a fun one too...

Monday, February 19, 2007

Lookit!!

Swish, shwish, swish...whooosh, whooosh...achoo!!

dusting off

There... had to get all the dust off this blog!


jazboo1

Are you still there? Cuz I have something to show you....Lookit what I made!

Oh - um...not the hat, the shirt in the picture below. V, my friend at work, found
this really cool technique for using sheer curtain material and Mod Podge to do silkscreening. So this weekend we got together and tried it out. It was so much fun! First we went shopping for supplies, and spent way too much time wandering around the fabric store. Then we grabbed some burgers and headed to her house to get creative.

First I made my screen. Since I had a 20-inch hoop, I could do more than one design. Then while the Mod Podge dried, I stamped a t-shirt all over with a foam stamp and Lumiere paints. I don't have a picture of that shirt...mostly because I can't find it right now!

When the screen was dry, I went to work silkscreening my shirt. It was kind of slow work, since I had to do it in sections. I was using Lumiere acrylic paints, and they tend to dry quickly. I couldn't let the screen stay on the shirt too long as I was afraid the paint would dry and stick to the screen. I did find, though, that leaving the screen on for a little bit was best so the paint could flow through the screen and adhere to the shirt. Wanna see what I did?

This is the shirt in progress. The screen is on the left, in that quilting hoop:

decoteeprogress

And here's the finished shirt. I love how the colors glow on the black fabric:

decotee

We stayed up way too late on Saturday night working on our projects, but we were having so much fun just being creative. There's nothing like getting together with a friend to make art that gets the muse working again.

We did even more on Sunday, working away as we jammed to raggae music. Now how cool is that?