I have so much to catch up on!

I’ll try to get caught up over the next week or so, but it’s going to take several posts to get there.

When I got back from Madison, WI, after close to 2 months on the road, I got together with a couple girlfriends for a fun day of wine tasting in Lodi, just south of Sacramento. We started our day with a visit to a wonderful spot downtown called Cheese Central to stock up on olives, bread and cheese to accompany all the yummy deep reds we would be tasting through out the day, Lodi is a region known for Zinfandels and I love a good old vine zin.

A few days later, I was back on the road again, but luckily this time only 20 miles away to Folsom where I taught a 2 day Acrylic Inks workshop. I love being able to just load up my car with supplies, instead of shipping things ahead and carefully weigh my suitcases to keep them from topping 50 pounds each.

It was great to see several familiar faces from past workshops that I’ve taught in the area, and as you can see from the photos below we had a lot of fun creating lots of beautiful fabric!

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One of my students brought her finished piece from the Tsukineko inks workshop she took with me a few years ago.

Tsukineko inks are very different from Acrylic Inks. The easiest way to explain it is to compare them to watercolor and acrylic paints. Tsukineko inks are more like watercolors; they are clear vibrant colors that do not change the hand of the fabric in any way, behaving more like dyes that stain the fabric.

Acrylic inks are more like traditional paints, in that they sit on the surface of the fabric and will change the hand of it somewhat. Tsukineko inks are best suited for finely rendered illustration type of imagery and Acrylic inks work great with a broad range of painting and mixed-media techniques.

a bit of news from my home life…

When I came back from Folsom I found out my son had been awarded Chemistry student of the year at Sacramento City college and had also been accepted to UC Berkeley as a transfer student in Chemical Biology! Not bad for a homeschooled kid 🙂

My fear has been that it would be extremely difficult for him to pay for housing in the Bay area since it’s soooooo expensive, but a week later he was awarded the extremely prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship. That is only given to 75 students in the US!!! It covers up to $40,000 a year of college expenses for 3 years. The extra wonderful part about it is he can use it to finish his undergrad and use it for graduate school. I am one proud mamma! 😀

I’d love to spark your creativity at one these upcoming events:

August 12-13 SLO Creative Studio, San Louis Obispo, CA  2-day Acrylic Inks workshop

September 21 Quilting in the Garden Livermore, CA – Painting Floral Imagery with Textile Paints

Nov 3-6 International Quilt Festival, Houston
Nov 1  Tsukineko Inks
Nov 2 Tea and Ephemera
Nov 3 Tsukineko inks
Nov 4 Blessings in the Wind: mixed media prayer flags

January 12-15  Craft Napa – Sign up Now!
Jan 12 Painting Imagery with Textile Paints
Jan 12 Fast and Fun Foam Stamps
Jan 13 Paint and Print-a-palooza
Jan 14 Blessings in the Wind, mixed-media prayer flags

Stay tuned for more updates later this week, in the mean time…

Keep creating, Judy

ABOUT JUDY
Judy is an artist, explorer, image wrangler, knowledge seeker, instructor, speaker, creative alchemist, and purveyor of inspiration, helping others channel creativity on a daily basis.