Category Archives: tips

Jalapeño Cranberry Relish recipe for your Thanksgiving emjoyment

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This stuff is yummy. I got the recipe from our friend, the late, great Arnold Hyman, a jewelry designer here in San Antonio. Arnold is no longer with us, but his cranberry relish lives on  lives on at our table, and, hopefully, at yours.

It’s incredible easy. The recipes follows the photos – hope you enjoy it:

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Arnold’s Cranberry-Jalapeño Relish

1 pkg. (12 0z.) fresh or frozen cranberries

1 whole lime

3/4 cup sugar

1-2 jalapeños, seeded and minced

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Coarsely chop cranberries in food processor. Transfer to bowl. Cut lime including peel into small pieces–process until finely diced. Add cranberries, sugar, and jalapeño. Mix in cilantro and refrigerate several hours–makes 2 1/2 cups.

(Note: I chop everything coarsely in the food processor – Lyn)

My (right-this-minute) Etsy Favorite 5

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You know Etsy, right? If not, I’m gonna get you in a lot of trouble, cause it’s an amazing online global marketplace of creative delights. Look at some of the things you can find today on Etsy. These are my current favorite shops (but it may change with every new discovery :)):

etsy1Tomyres Boutique – Ugur Daskan’s art-to-wear collection. Ugur is from Turkey and has a wonderfully creative way with paper and fiber. This is her Wire Statement Necklace w/ Blooming Flowers. The lovely white cocoon necklace that I showed in my last post came from Ugur. She featured the post on her FB page. 

 

 

 

 

etsy2Casa de Charms Shop from McAllen, Texas is where I order milagros for my own artwork. Amador, the owner, is easy to work with and has fair prices and quick shipping. He also has larger milagros and really funny Day-of-the-Dead shopping bags.

 

 

 

 

 

etsy3House of Ceramics – despite its generic name, this studio site has some beautifully designed work like these fired and glazed apples. Una, the artist/owner, is from Fresno, California.

 

 

 

etsy4Buster Bean Knows – this Etsy shop is pretty unique. Here you can find natural stuff, rusty stuff, kitschy stuff – here’s what the owner says about herself – “I live near Sedona about midway between the Grand Canyon and Phoenix with my 3 dogs, Buster (the namesake of my shop), Duncan & Paloma. Buster knows the meaning of life… be creative and enjoy every moment you can.”  Pretty cool.

 

 

 

etsy5Hoooked Soap, form Peralta, NM. I think I like this shop as much for the names and the colors and textures as I do for the soaps themselves. This one is called Dragon’s Blood Exfoliating Soap with Poppy Seeds. Talk about power to the shower – but I think there is something so appealing about artisan-made personal goods, and this shop has that kind of appeal.

It’s easy to get mesmerized while looking around on Etsy – when I was putting this post together, I went down a lot of rabbit holes checking out other stuff and got lots of ideas an inspiration! But now I need to get to work finishing some faces for my own Etsy shop, EarthShards (sneaky segue). Have a great weekend, everyone!

Know when to fold ’em –

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tagPresenting, for your Labor Day holiday folding pleasure, a simple but impressive little origami project. You can make a stack of these pocket-note-tags to use on gifts or even as place cards. You can even drink out of them, as you will see. This Emmy winning (not) short video was produced in my dining room. Awards go to Max the Cat for Best Immovable Object and Chico the Cat for Best Wardrobe Malfunction.

 

Gilding the wax paper – or whatever

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And now, for your mid-week creative pleasure, here’s a short tutorial about how to manage that pesky gold leaf. What you apply the stuff to is entirely your business 🙂

Feel free to share!

Jane Dunnewold’s Design and Print Your Own Fabric

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I’ve been a fan of Jane Dunnewold’s work forever. Her book, Art Cloth, is a must-have encyclopedia of surface treatment for fabric, and a design inspiration for every artist. Recently, she asked me to review her new video for Interweave called Design and Print Your Own Fabric. Wow! So, I’m not really a fiber artist but this video opened up a whole new area for me as a digital artist. She is great at de-mystifying the process of taking an idea for a design, getting it into your computer for enhancing and refining (she effectively explains those thorny pixels and resolution), and ending up with fabric-on-demand from Spoonflower.

janeVery very cool! And way too much fun. The download is just $14.95. I have a ton of art book and videos, but this one is truly useful for those of you who are somewhat befuddled by digital design and how it can work for you. I’m so glad Jane asked me to review this and I am happy to share my enthusiasm with you!

Happy Monday, all, and thanks to everyone who came to the Spring Fling show on Saturday!

 

Wonderful workshop weekend – not just one, but TWO videos filled with great ideas

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Well, happy Monday, everybody! Hope you had a great weekend – as for me, I had the most fabulous time at the Studio. On Saturday, ten amazing NEISD art teachers met to experiment with Citra-solv altered magazine pages as collage components. And on Sunday, a flock of beautiful Spring Goddess Spirit Dolls were born. Thanks to everyone who graced the place with their creativity – take a look at what they did! (Oh, and congrats to talented and generous Vicki Siptak, random drawing winner of the Milagrito Friday Freebie.)

Art Teachers’ Workshop

Spring Goddess Spirit Doll Workshop

Shhhhh . . fabric and hand sanitizer transfer secret for Shards subscribers only

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OK, so I’m not posting this to FaceBook or any other site – just to you blog subscribers (yay for you!). Here’s how the hand sanitizer transfer process works. This technique and a bunch of other cool ones will be featured in my Collage on Canvas class at Artful Gathering this summer. (Hint hint).

You’ll need some inkjet transparency sheets (be sure to get inkjet, not laser) and a color inkjet printer. Here’s a source for some very affordable ones at Amazon. Print your image onto the transparency using the grainy textured side as the printing surface (usually face down in the tray). Set it aside while you cut or tear a piece of white cotton sheeting to approximately the size of the transparency. Tape the fabric piece down to one of those flexible chopping boards boards at all four corners, stretching it taut but not overly tight.

So now you need a small bottle of clear hand sanitizer. I used one of the little travel sizes that I got for 89 cents at Walgreens. Run a strip of the stuff across the top of the fabric, and pull it down evenly with an old credit card 6or small piece of mat board. Once the fabric has been smoothly coated, place your printed transparency, ink side down, on the fabric and rub it in to adhere it. You can use the other side of the old credit card or mat board to do this. Set it aside for ten minutes or so, then rub it again before testing a corner by pulling it up. It should have transferred the ink from the transparency to the sheeting. Optional – take a hair dryer and slip it between the fabric and the cutting board to dry the fabric before you peel the film off – this will set it and hopefully keep it from smearing (although I have never had a problem with the ink smearing). Peel off the transparency film. That’s it! let me know how it works. Even if it doesn’t work perfectly, you’ll be germ free – LOL.

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Where has this week gone? . . .and Friday Freebie

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Did this week disappear as fast for you as it did for me? Yikes – so little time, so much to do. As promised, a SHARDS subscriber (new or old or ancient) will receive a Scent Shard of his/her/its very own if his/her/its name is drawn on Sunday night by the Magic Randomizer. Here’s the lovely Shard, a classic face with spirals.shard2

Looking ahead, I’ve just posted a new Celtic Spirit Doll workshops for February – I’ve been doing a little research on the subject, and this should be fun – you, too, can Create a Spirit Doll whose roots lie in Tír na nÓg , the Celtic place of eternal youth and beauty. It should be fun – spirit doll workshops are really such a favorite of mine and everyone else’s.

And if you’re a writer (aren’t we all in one way or another), please consider Nancy West’s Creative Writing Seminar and Workshop at the Studio on two Wednesday evenings, January 15th & 22, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. For just $40, this two-part workshop is the literary bargain of the new year – Nancy is funny and creative and a delight to work with. Plus there will be good snacks – yeah! I might even make some of my pal PJ’s Saltine Toffee. It’s sinfully addictive. Happy weekend, All!

Faux fossils

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This is kind of interesting – I’m doing some dimensional paintings for the La Vida show on Dec. 6th and have been experimenting with Activa Super-Light Air Dry Clay as part of the process. Look at these fossil-like shards – they weight about as much as a feather but look really cool, kind of like limestone:faux fossils

These were finished with Tsukineko walnut ink. I’m not sure how I’m going to use them yet, but I know I’ll include this idea in the Exploring Air-Dry Clay workshop on December 15. Scorpion fossil jewelry, anyone?

By the skin of its finny-fin-fin

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One of the “Aha!” artsy discoveries I made in Boston was Fish Leather. Now maybe you knew all about it, but I didn’t. And it’s beautiful! It looks like suede on one side and has a glossy.scale-like pattern on the other side. Here’s a piece that I purchased from Bead+Fiber.

fl1_edited-1 There’s a shop called The Fish Leather Co in the UK that’s specializing in this material, and you can find out from their site how it’s made. It’s apparently a long process and different species of fish have different kinds of leathers. Definitely interesting to read about! Fish Leather is eco-friendly and taken from non-endangered fish (unless you’re the fish that gets turned into leather, I guess).fl2

I found a shop on Etsy that has hand-crafted Fish Leather jewelry – it’s called ModernNaturals19 and the artisan does nice work – see the cuff bracelet below. You’d have to sew a bunch of these together to make a garment of any kind, but the material itself is beautiful and I can see it being used for small adornments and decorative objects. Dang. Fish leather. Who woulda thought?