birdfriend

Hawaiian beach style

No, I didn't go to Hawaii over spring break, but I did the next best thing... I raided my closet for some vintage Hawaiian dresses! My dad bought them for my mom when they vacationed there in the early '90s. I was also there, but I was just a chubby little baby so unfortunately I don't remember it. I love the dresses, though, and they fit me perfectly!

This one is a faux-wrap dress. I wore it with some flip flops from J. Crew and a plastic chain necklace from Target.

And here is my favorite! It was a bit chilly so I wore a denim blouse from H&M on top, with pink flats and my favorite chain necklace (which I was so excited about I wore every day for a week!). You can also see my new purse, which I had been searching for for ages.... nautical seagreen and white striped canvas and leather, from Charming Charlie!

As it turns out, both dresses were by Australian artist and designer Ken Done. I love his bright beachy patterns!

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And here's Darby and I, all dressed up and ready to go out for sushi!

(slideshow image sources: 1 2 3 )

RU1: Sequins Snow & Sheets

I've decided to do weekly roundups of little things that I've done or discovered that don't deserve a full post, but that I still want to share! Ideally I'd like to do these on Sundays, but of course here I am starting on a Monday. Hopefully I can get into a good routine for this!

First off: 

A quick interveiw with my friend and classmate Valerie!

From my original article on HerCampus: 

"Valerie Detwiler, a freshman at IU and a Bloomington native, is rocking this eclectic and chic outfit! Her favorite piece is obviously the fox sweater. Her best friend bought it for her at Urban Outfitters, knowing how much she loves sequins. Plus it has so much character! She kept the rest of her outfit simple and inexpensive with a denim jacket and purple flats from Old Navy, pants from Forever 21, and a structured bag from Target."

I'm so jealous of her....

Look guys! I made a gif! (You might have to click on it to see, but I promise it's worth it!)

 

Some cool trees with little hanging stems. Reminds me a lot of the short films that went along with the album Let England Shake by PJ Harvey... Speaking of which, I'm really hoping to do a kind of pattern series based off these beautiful videos. The music is lovely but also very, very sad.

 

(still from Bitter Branches)

Speaking of patterns, here's a bit of a swirly pattern I made a few nights ago. It kind of started looking like an octopus and now I can't unsee it!

 

 

And from a sudden sprinkling of snow we had a few nights ago....

I haven't decided yet if I want to do a full post about the snow. I was really surprised how the camera captured the snowflakes, but all the pictures turned out looking very much the same!

And from other websites.....

I love these plushies from LokiCoki! The mixture of crochet and felt is right up my alley. She has cute little creatures of all kinds for sale in her etsy!

My favorite newly-discovered blog: In Color Order. Just look at that header! I came across this blog when I was looking at patterns on tumblr and discovered Jeni's amazing collection of vintage sheets. The colors and floral patterns are just gorgeuous, and she makes such beautiful quilts out of them! I am just itching to take her advice on thrifting to find my own unique fabrics!

That's all for this week! I know this all seemed a bit disorganized, so I'll probably keep working on the format in coming weeks. But I hope you enjoyed it!

exciting things!

My friend Dan, of Dead Dog Output, is building a guitar pedal and I'm in charge of decorating it! He asked for a circle pattern and helped me pick out a color scheme, and here is what we have:

I'm not sure yet how to adhere it to the metal (I'm thinking a vinyl sticker, perhaps?) but I'm super excited to finish this project!!

Meanwhile, Dan has just finished his second album. Download it here! I also designed the layout for his site, and my geranium pattern made an appearance:

In other news, my friend and fellow screenprinter Mike Ferris got my t-shirts in the mail! We did a trade and I got one of his cool posters, but I accidentally lieft it at home. At any rate, here is Mike wearing the bow shirt!

 

 

sitting pretty

Today was my last class for Textiles I. Sad day. But I got my final project back! Here it is:

And here is how I did it: 

One of our assignments in textiles was to do a photo emulsion on a silk screen. I'm not exactly sure what photo emulsion is, but it involves putting chemicals on the screen and putting it in a huge machine that sucks all the air out and makes a really scary noise... Anyways we had to make a Commemorative Cloth using a symbol that defines us, and I chose geraniums. Red geraniums are my favorite flower and I'm also so excited to have them in our yarn every summer! I think this was the picture I used:

And here is a detail of the Commemorative Cloth:
First I dyed the yellow background stripes, and then printed layers and layers of green, black, and pinkish red. 

Next I scanned it into the computer and used photoshop to grab details from the print. I used my tablet to draw this sketchy flower design, and I made it into a repeating pattern.

Next my design was printed on fabric, and here's what it looks like in real life:

But I couldn't just turn in some fabric! So I bought a small vanity chair at Goodwill, painted the frame pink, and reupholstered the cushion. Voila!

baby's first craft fair

Yes, a few days ago was birdfriend's very first craft fair. It was held in the Indiana Memorial Union at IU, run by the Union Board. There were around 10 other booths: mostly jewelry, scarves, and art. I had been very busily (and stressfully) knitting and crocheting as many headbands as I could, and ended up with a decent amount! But not before making a huge mess in the lounge putting them together.

Here is a sampling of what I had:

knitted with a seed stitch; crochet and wrapped middles

sparkly buttons!

and of course my favorite, BOWS!

I borrowed a little card table from a friend and got everything all set up. We had a pretty steady stream of people in the three hours we were there. And I sold two right off the bat!

And I had a bunch of friends who came to visit me and brought me dinner and stuff :)

I also set out the t-shirts I printed (seen here) but didn't sell any. But I'll be trading a few for some prints by Mike Ferris who contacted me on tumblr, so that'll be exciting!

 edit: I have officially surpassed 1000 views on my blog! first stop views, next stop comments? :)

bows bows bows!

did you see my adventures in screenprinting the other day? if not, here ya go!

as you can see, i'm wearing my lovely t-shirt featuring a whole bunch of bows. and as is so often the case, instead of creating an outfit around a cool t-shirt, i just put on a cool t-shirt and then put a bunch of other stuff on too. sometimes i am proud of the results. in this case i wore the blazer because i wanted to be slightly dressy for a friend's birthday dinner but also didn't want to change out of the t-shirt...

t-shirt: handmade (obviously!)
blazer: forever 21
jeans: gap i think
socks: american eagle
shoes: mystery brogues (someday i will peel off that sticker and see what the real brand is.)
braided leather bracelet: bought at a fair-trade fashion show, presumably from africa
feather earrings: forever 21
hat: also handmade. see the post from a long, long time ago here. 

and you may marvel at me matching a pink bow shirt to a pink bow hat.... but i basically just wore that hat because it was really cold outside. serendipity, i tell you.

screenprinting adventures

So this weekend I decided to use my newfound screenprinting prowess for fun and not class! I had ordered a bunch of white t-shirts wholesale and decided to print my own designs.

Number one and probably my favorite: bows bows bows!

and anther variation, modeled by my lovely assistant Julian:

I also acted as Mama Mackenzie and helped out Kylie and Julie with their own designs. Here they are using the Eagle Stance:

Making me cringe but getting it done. Their shirts were a quote from Merlin, which they translated into runes and cut out by hand.... 

We also got to the point where we started printing on things we were wearing. Like Julie's jeans. Here she is wearing a skirt she constructed out of spare t-shirts for the half hour she wasn't wearing any pants:

And here we have the finished product, jeans with bows!!

My final design: MAKE EVERYTHING! I really love these t-shirts and definitely will be making more.

I'm planning on selling some of my designs, so leave a comment and tell me if you are interested! Otherwise keep an eye out, I'm sure I will be posting more soon.

screenprinting it up!!

Here's what I've learned about screenprinting: IT IS AWSOME. It's what we've been studying in my textiles class lately. Here are my two samples; the designs were made using a stencil I cut out with an X-acto knife and they're meant to be deeply layered. Each is around 2 feet long--these are just details!

They took about 5 hours each to finish. After each color the screen, stencil, squeegee and spatula had to be rinsed and dried, and the fabric had to dry as well. Who knew that screenprinting was mostly about clumsily spraying myself with water and then using a hair dryer to blowdry the paint?

(Second post about Chicago coming up next!)

globe/brain/chewed up gum

My first art project of college! We were supposed to use the techniques we had learned so far in the semester: shibori & fiber reactive dyes. It was also supposed to be a self-portrait without concrete imagery. So naturally, I made this ball thing.

I was inspired by globes with textured typography: the kind with raised mountains that you can touch. So I glued my fabric onto a rubber ball in a wrinkled, ridged manner. It looked pretty legit, no one knew I had used a glue stick!!

Here's how it's a self-portrait: The globe represents a journey through emotional ups and downs, with dark patches and light patches all mixed together. I really like the way the black makes streaks through the pink. I wish it wasn't so pink though-- it was supposed to be more of a flesh color, but it's nearly impossible to mix that with the basic colors we had to choose from!

My classmates seemed to like it during the critique, but they also said some weird things... Somebody called it chewed up gum and someone said it resembled a brain. Which.... both of those things are true. Haha. I guess if chewed gum represents who I am... who am I to argue?

<3 birdfriend