Friday, February 25, 2011

Natural Homemade Dyes







I've been a natural dye buff for many years. I love the process of creating them and the smell of them cooking. I think the colors that come from nature have such a unique look and feel. I used to teach classes every year at Wild Oats on how to dye eggs for Easter using coffee, beets, turmeric, purple cabbage, onion skins and more. I even went on the news one year to demonstrate my techniques to Anietra Hampur on NBC 4!
In the past few years I've experimented with using natural dyes to make art and I've had some great success with it. This last weekend I was able to present my knowledge about natural dyes to about sixty attendees of the fantastic OEFFA conference in Granville, Ohio. I also led a "paint with natural dyes" activity for about thirty kids during the kid's conference as well. It was so much fun and I just love being at the conference and look forward to it each year.

If you'd like to learn more about Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association you can visit their website at: http://www.oeffa.org/

During the adult session I demonstrated painting natural dyes onto wood using an old salvaged cupboard door. I've continued working on the piece I started at the conference and will be posting it here when it's finished!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Pets with Treats!







I created this illustration for the Union County Humane Society for an event they have coming up called "Treats 'n Sweets" where a Girl Scout troupe is making homemade pet treats to sell to benefit UCHS along with their traditional cookies. I used UCHS's cat and dog characters then added some bones for the dog and made the cat juggling cookies - which I had to look up a picture of to get them right. It's been a while since I ate Girl Scout cookies, lol. The event is on March 5th from 1-3pm at UCHS.






For more info visit their website: http://www.uchspets.org/