I just started messing around with stained glass after getting a bunch of leftover bits and tools from a friend. Since I have a shit ton of rocks, I tried out the same process on these rose quartz to make charms.

I don't really have specialized materials, so I used copper tape, wire and electrosol solder (lead free.) Not sure if I like the silver so I ordered a black patina to see how that goes.

Flux was my best friend, here..I read lots of info saying lead free solder is hard to spread, but with the right flux it flowed nicely over the tape.

Key points:

• Cheap. Cheap cheap.
• Tent is 10 x 10ft
• It's for a Renaissance Faire

I'm doing the market at my first ever Ren Faire where we're strongly encouraged to do up our tents to fit the theme. I'm basically a swamp witch, so I'm leaning into the whole natural/alchemy vibe.

I already have a tent and fold-up tables, I just need to figure out how to cover the whole thing cheaply and easily enough it doesn't take a lot of time from making stuff to sell.

I have about two dozen skeins of yarn I've dyed various greens, enough different green scrap fabrics to cover the whole top, if sewn together, and off-white tableclothes.

Oh, and everything needs to fit into a car.

Does anyone have any idea for how to swamp-witch it up without spending a lot of time or money? I live in a small, rural town, so local supplies are limited to basics.

I call these "catballs" as well, because they're all filled with catnip for my sweet nightmare baby.

So! Here's how to make a catball. You need:

Wool roving - Sheep's wool specifically has a rough texture under a microscope. The bumpy parts help it lock into itself when it gets tangled up.

A felting needle - These are long needles use to stab the wool together. The barbs along the length help pull the wool fibres into the mass. You can also get reverse barbed needles to re-fuzzify things.

A thick sponge - A firm felting surface the wool woving won't stick to.

Catnip - Dried and optional.

I always start with the "burrito method" where I take a hand-length bit of roving and roll it up like a burrito around the catnip, pulling in the sides as well. I stab that a bunch, rolling it on the sponge to get all sides until it's relatively secure, then I start adding more chunks of wool, wrapping and turning the ball, slowly building up through stabbing until it's solid.

To make the iris, I take a small bit of roving in a different colour to roll and squish it between my fingers until it's about discus-shaped, then I stab that into my ball - careful around the edges to keep it round. At this point I can layer up the iris if it's not thick enough.

I then twist another bit of roving into a loose thread between my fingers, and carefully stab that in, a little at a time, tracing the edge of the iris.

The veins are made with a chaotic version of the thread method, just stab it semi-random and watch the blood vessels form.

Once you master the eyeball you can move on to the banana and the peep.

Just to show the difference material makes when dyeing. All of these went into the same dye bath at the same time and they all started out white or off-white.

I used Rit non-synthetic emerald and kelly green dyes. I have no idea the composition of the yarn, I got a big bag of various untagged cakes and skeins at my local thrift store for five bucks. I'll probably re-do the lighter ones in a synthetic dye bath to see what happens.

Normally I'd unwind yarn to dye but in this case I wanted the mottled look and variance in colour for a faux-moss blanket project.

I make creatures like these with my failed felting projects. I have dozens with no end in sight.

Sashiko translates directly to “little stabs,” a reference to the small, repeated running stitches that define the technique.

Originating during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), sashiko began as a practical form of reinforcement. In northern regions such as Tōhoku, where winters were long and cotton was scarce, rural communities relied heavily on hemp and ramie textiles. These fibers were durable but not especially warm. Layers were stitched together with dense rows of white cotton thread, both to strengthen worn garments and to trap warmth between the fabrics.

Over time, these reinforcing stitches developed into geometric patterns—waves, interlocking circles, grids—many of which carried symbolic meaning tied to protection, prosperity, or longevity.

— Quoted from https://www.taylorstitch.com/blogs/archive/fabric-stories-sashiko

I've personally used quite of few of these. Avocado, indigo, blue spruce and mint make my favorite natural colours.

You can just soak avocado pits and skins in isopropyl alcohol to make a deep red/orange ink.

It took weeks of extracting, reacting, waiting, grinding and binding - but I finally have a full palette to last me years.

From the first column, going down:

1. Quartz and Iron oxide, blueberries, recovered green dye

2. Amethyst and agate, avocado, birch bark

3. Iron oxide, cranberries

4. Red Cabbage

5. Beets, kyanite, tumeric

6. Recovered neon green dye and spinach, red roses

I use the lake pigment method to make most of my paints, though it's a little different for blueberries — I soak them in isopropyl instead of water to make dye.

After that I use an acid/base reaction to precipitate the colour out of solution, let it dry, pulverize the resulting hard cake of pigment, and mix with glycerine, honey, gum arabic solution and clove oil to make watercolour paint I dry in pans.

Yes, my muller is a glass butt plug and my pallette is a microwave platter. I'm industrious, not rich.

I think she's beautiful.

Encaustic is an art form using wax mixed with damar resin and paints or pigments to create images. While stunning art can be made using this method, I went the mixed-media route (including a bug caught by my cat) to create this fleshy looking mess. That I love.

I made my own encaustic medium by melting together beeswax and powdered damar resin, which isn't the only way to make the medium, but it is the most popular (from what I read.)

It works! Here's mine:

The lower piece, which looks nearly black, sat overnight in a cold dye bath of Rit Red Wine, liquid, for organic fibres. The upper piece only spent 5 minutes in the same bath, but hot. Just to show the variety of colours you can get out of one dye.

I dye burlap scraps for use in other projects, mainly for texture in wet felting.

My drop spinning hobby just got an upgrade. I bought this entirely because I spun one of my spindles in the wrong direction and didn't want to re-spin it by hand.

Yarn is usually made of two threads that turn into each other, the tension holding them together to make a stronger, straight thread. Spinning only creates one thread that needs to be twisted with another to make the actual yarn, or else it tangles with itself.

Bellow my first ball there, you can see my spindles (chopsticks and a paintbrush) hand-wrapped from my drop spindle, which isn't shown here. The red is spun from uncombed loose locks of wool, usually called "teasewater locks."

I've modified brushes, but never made my own. All I know is I'm long overdue for a haircut.

A local, independently owned yarn store partnered with the Little Free Library Project to create free fibre libraries around the city, providing yarn, needles and other fibre arts supplies to the community.

Edit: I forgot the link! https://baaadannas.com/little-fibre-library-resource-page/

This article covers the science, culture and history, as well as the how-to for a basic bark basket.

Bottom: Iron mordant adjunct

Middle: Copper mordant adjunct

Top: Aluminum Sulfate adjunct

Jar: Bubbling lake pigment

Left corner: Used sandpaper

I have a potato phone.

But they are all peachy colours. The jar is stained red from other dyes, it doesn't come out.

Wool roving usually starts to felt during this process, I have carders to fluffy it back up after.

Don't do it.

It made my whole kitchen smell like old eggs and the colour just wasn't worth it, and that was before the aluminum sulfate.

But I'll probably try it again with different wools and mordants...

Anyway, I peeled about 300g from paper birch trees (respectfully, a little bit from each tree,) and soaked it in water for two days. Then, I simmered it on low heat a couple hours, let stand another day (I was busy) then added about 50g wool I'd mordanted with soda ash.

The wool simmered for a couple hours then sat in the dye bath for another day. After that, I rinsed, tried some different mordants, then added aluminum sulfate solution in water to the dye bath to extract the rest of the pigment... which really made it smell like rotten eggs. I'm in the frozen north with my door wide open, now.

Maybe I'll try again in the summer time.

I'll break down and recycle the spent bark into paper as well. Stay tuned for that.

Crayons are the wax counterparts to pastels, and, even though they're associated with rough childhood sketches, even fine artists have used crayons from the early Renaissance to today.

You're not limited to sketching, either. You can use them in encaustic paintings, melt them with a wick into candle moulds, or melt and mix them with hot glue to make bottle sealing wax, or wax for seals.

Where: Robertson Branch Library (1719 S. Robertson Boulevard)

When: Monday, Feb 23rd, 6 pm

Join Waldorf Handwork Educator Brie Wakeland Muszynski for a hands-on workshop on how to sustainably create beautiful, naturally dyed fabric using various local plant species. In this workshop, participants will utilize black walnut and toyon plant material to dye a napkin/bandana to take home.

I've had all the ingredients for this for about a month now. I will post here once I get around to actually making it. Has anyone else made soap? How did it go?

From the rule of thirds to the Fibonacci sequence to pomegranates, math and symbols are all over art. Éliphas Lévi was big on occult symbolism while Alex Grey is all about the spirituality. What symbols or "rules" do you find most interesting?

Actually, I made about three dozen with a new mold I just got today.

I save all my cleanly split walnut shells to make tiny boxes, but sometimes only one half survives. After collecting a bag of them, I used them to recycle my spent candles.

This is a test. I read that fermenting lichen in ammonia for about six months creates a natural fabric dye that doesn't require a mordant.

This is actually test 2, since I tried to precipitate the dye out of test 2 and ended up making poison piss instead.

Colours range from yellow to red to purple depending on the process and type of lichen. I don't know lichens, so I just threw whatever in there and hoped for the best. You can see the ammonia turned very dark, so I think it worked.

TBD if it actually dyes, I'm waiting till it's warm enough to open a door before I start boiling ammonia in my kitchen.