This week I posted the first holiday gift boxes in my store. Each box includes a 100% silk satin hand marbled scarf (11" x58"), a color quote from an artist, a full color insert showing 12 ways to wear a scarf, a blank gift enclosure card, and care instructions. I'm pleased with the way the simple Kraft paper packaging highlights the colors in each scarf.

These ready-to-go gift boxes simplify your holiday shopping - they are all set to pop into a gift bag and put in the mail or under the tree! Find them in my store. Have a particular color in mind? Get in touch - I may be able to accommodate you.

Included in each gift pack:

So fun to be included as a "Featured Artist" on Dharma Trading Co.'s website! I always enjoy reading about what other crafters are doing, and it's nice to be able to share what I'm doing as well.

Dharma is the source of many of my marbling materials. They are a fiber arts supply store extraordinaire, with a tremendous inventory and some of the best prices around. I highly recommend them to anyone doing textile arts of any sort.

The summer has flown, as always, and autumn has begun. That means that show season is gearing up, and I'm switching into massive marbling mode.

My mind is full of colors and patterns that I will try to transfer to silk and bring to shows in the next few months. The weather is beautiful, the skies are blue, and the leaves are gradually turning brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow. This seasonal blaze of color always makes me want to marble everything in ochre, crimson, mango, buttermilk and mocha. 

This is a scarf I made last year, inspired by the foliage. 

You know I love a good upcycle, and I build my own displays from repurposed materials. I've been using a rack I made with panels from two different baby cribs and a pair of men's pants racks. This is how it looked:

But, as with most display fixtures, it wasn't until I'd used it for a while that its shortcomings became apparent, including the fact that it was a bit heavy to manage easily, extremely cumbersome to set up, crowded and busy looking, and not sufficiently durable for the craft show circuit. Worst of all, it did not make it easy for customers to look at my scarves. 

So I set to work remaking it. Now my table display is just two crib panels, to which I've added Shaker pegs. I think the scarves show better, and it's easier for customers to reach them. And it's much easier to set up, too - always a bonus! I really like the way it looks:

And I also turned the end panels of the crib, which have a nice curved design, into a standing floor rack:

I'm really pleased with the new racks. You can visit me and my upcycled displays at a number of shows through the holiday season - be sure to check my show calendar!

Habotai is a plain weave silk fabric that is light weight but quite sturdy. It has a rather dense weave, giving it the kind of tight, smooth surface that is ideal for marbling. However, its surface also gives it a somewhat crisp, paper-like feel, not the soft, drapey texture of silk satin, which I prefer for my scarves.

But habotai is absolutely ideal for head wraps! In fact, here it has several advantages over satin: 

• more body, so it creates a good shape for a wrap. 
• not slippery, so it holds knots and tucks tightly.
• less expensive, so I can offer it at lower prices.
• And lastly, it's semi-sheer, so it only needs to be marbled once (my satin scarves are either marbled on both sides or pre-dyed, to avoid a blank back). This also means a lower price.

Summer is the perfect time for the easy style of a colorful silk habotai head wrap!

The past two weekends I've had the pleasure of participating in two art/craft shows in Greenwich Village (NYC). The crowds were big and friendly, my vendor neighbors were nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with the many delightful people who stopped by my table! 

Many thanks to you all for your time, enthusiasm and kind words about my scarves. It's a tremendous pleasure to meet you all, and to see you enjoying my work. And I enjoy sharing the process and history of marbling with you - thanks for your interest, and your good questions!

The boost I get from the people I meet at shows really keeps me going through the inevitable marbling misfires, like color combinations that looked great in my mind's eye but resembled dog food when they hit the silk; or losing an entire batch of scarves because for unknown reasons the color just didn't adhere to the cloth.

On another note . . . Until now I have been marbling my scarves on both sides to avoid a blank back. It's tremendously time consuming, and I'm not always pleased with the results, so  I decided to try hand dyeing the silk first, then marbling over it. Tonight I dyed my first batch, a gorgeous turquoise blue. Can't wait to try marbling over it, and see what results! (Note to self: check rubber gloves for holes before starting - gives a whole new meaning to "hand dyed"!)

At long last, it is really Spring here in the Northeast. Today was just gorgeous: brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies and warm temps in the mid-70s - fantastic! I took a walk and photographed the beautiful colors of everything in blossom.

Lately I've drawn marbling inspiration from the soft colors of this wonderful season. Oh, the the bright green of new buds and young leaves! The warm yellow of forsythia, daffodils and dandelions! The soft pink of magnolia and tulip trees . . . the fresh white of pear and apple blossoms . . . and the piquant surprise of an occasional red amid the softer colors. Marvelous!

Here are some of my images of Spring in Bloom, and the scarves the season inspired.

What's a frisket, you ask? It's a barrier to printing! It is used to selectively create blank areas in a print, by blocking parts of the image to be printed from the thing you're printing on. You can make friskets in any shape you want using a special plastic film available from art stores, or make your own out of any readily available suitable objects. 

Using friskets in marbling is a little tricky. You have to float them on the surface of the marbling bath after the pattern is created, and keep them from sinking or messing up the design. 

And the very nature of the gooey liquid you marble on, which facilitates the formation of soft, organic shapes, makes it hard to get a crisp outline around a frisket, I've learned that the best friskets have the simplest shapes. I experimented last year with Autumn leaves, and was disappointed with the results, because I couldn't get the proper level of detail in the leaf outlines.

This Spring, with thoughts of the beach in my head, I tried something else, and created a couple of porpoise scarves. The porpoise shape is much simpler and more streamlined than the leaves, and worked much better. I look forward to trying other shapes and effects!