Two scarves in one...

Ok so I wanted to show you a little about the inner working of MarissaInk and the really cool thing that I did on wednesday with my Stained Glass pieces. So because I wanted to get a lot done in a short amount of time, I created this really simple stained glass pattern. I had done one simular about three weeks ago, but this time the "pieces" where much bigger and thus allowing less time {AND LESS BLEEDING!!!} 

 So I made one Monday night in Green, Gold and Rose. Wednesday I wanted someone else to pick some colors, because I almost always use the same color... My Favorites! So I wanted some new color combos. Thus we have Stained Glass scarf Two, in Red, Blue and Magenta. 

While i was taking a photo of it to send it to my boyfriend, I had my camera phone on the "negative" filter. So the scarf turned out like this instead

Now I thought those colors where REALLY great together. {Granted its leaning back toward my Favorite colors...ah the teals and blues :) } But I figured... Why not? If you already know the colors are going to flow together, and its right there as if you sketched it, then go for it. So I did.  You will notice that my final scarf is less intense in color. {I had someone tell me that "White Square" was too strong for them, and the point of all this is for someone to purchase them, so I am hoping that the calmer tones will be more appealing}

   

So what you do think? 

As always, MarissaInk scarves are all hands-on... 

Hand mixed dyes and hand painted so each is unique and one of a kind, but  I can try to match colors and designs can be revisited if someone wishes. 

[You sometimes see the same color more then once because I try to use up my leftover dye before making new] 

Today's Special Guest

Today I had a friend in the studio.

Tory came down the stairs to see what I was doing. Because I was not sure if there was any poison, or anything else she might get into I found a piece of rope and tied her to my frame.... She didn't really like being tied up, and as soon as Grandma saw her and informed me that there was no poison, she got her freedom. :) But she was pretty happy to just lay under the frame... and tried her hardest to get dye on her.



Last week she was doing the same thing to my Mom, laying under the ladder when my mom was painting our house, and managed to get gray spots. Also I had painted a plank and was letting it dry on the floor... Bad Idea... Tory walked right over it, giving me cute yellow paw prints. Luckily we stopped her on the tarp, BEFORE she put her yellow prints on our hardwood floors.

Stained Glass

For those of you who don't know yet, MarissaInk's current theme is Stained Glass. It was in conjunction with the new SullivanMunce exhibit [and because it was fun]. Also if anyone has been paying attention you will know that set a goal on monday to have at lest 5 scarves completed and tagged for my meeting on Friday. Well it is my privilage to tell you all that i have FIVE FINISHED scarves hanging in my room at this very moment!! And its only WEDNESDAY! {throws confetti and drops a bag of balloons} With that said I might try to make one more for the meeting, not sure yet.

"Fair" amount of Fun

So for those of you in Indiana, you probably know about Connor Prairie and the Marsh Symphony On the Prairie.  [If you would like to know more about them, click the links and find out about this awesome place and the events it offers]

Anyway, my grandmother went a few weekends ago, and heard an announcement about a Mini Maker Fair and County Fair being held at Connor Prairie. So I decided to look it up and like everything else I seem to be behind the ball on finding things out. The original application due date was today... but it is in my favor that they pushed it back to July 30th.

Now I have to decide if I should actually go forward and submit the application. It has a $100 deposit and if I want to be a vender, [which I am pretty sure that would be the point of me going] its another $100.
Ok, I think I have gotten my head wrapped around the fact that any promoting is either going to take lots of time and portion of my wallet. The main thing that is stopping me from filling out the application [since their is not even a guarantee that I will be accepted] is the "What we are looking for" on the website advertisement.

Maker Faire is a family fun festival to MAKE, create, learn, invent, CRAFT, recycle, build, think, play and be inspired by celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, food, music, science and technology.

Have a neat hobby, craft, or technique you'd like to share with others?
Do you know a craft or technique you'd like to share with others?
Built something in the basement your friends and family think you're spending way too much time on?

We want to see it, and we want everyone else to see it too!

What are we looking for?

•    Things that bridge the gap between the technical and imaginative
•    Hands-on activities (i.e. visitors to your booth can make something)
•    Student projects (K-12 or college)
•    Robots
•    Green Tech (energy production/monitoring, electric vehicles, etc.)
•    DIY Science and Technology
•    Old technologies, such as steam engines and other pre-1900 machines
•    Unusual tools, machines, techniques
•    Whimsical technical creations
•    Fixing and/or taking things apart
•    Using historic techniques to make strange or unusual things

We are not looking for arts and crafts that people would normally see in other venues. A display of landscape paintings would probably not be accepted, but a landscape painting robot, for example, will catch our eye. 

So I'm not completely sure Silk Painted scarves fit those categories. Maybe MarissaInk does qualify and I am just scared of actually filling out the application. Your input would be GREATLY appreciated.

Friday Friday Friday

[in my head that was more of a big booming announcer guy voice, like for a monster truck competition, NOT Rebbecca Black's Friday song, I am sorry for those who now have that song suck in their heads.... maybe this will make up for it. :)]

Anyway, as I was saying, this Friday, I have a goal to meet. Unfortunately, that is about as far as that goal goes... well not completely. In my mind, I want to have at lest 3 new scarves designed, painted, cleaned and tagged to take with me to my lunch meeting at SullivanMunce. I am thinking of continuing with the Stained Glass theme, so the designing shouldn't be too difficult. However, the painting is where problems have arisen.  As I have mentioned before, my little "studio" is in my grandmother's basement. It is unfinished and I have had problems with the dyes bleeding into eachother in the past. Right now the only fix is to have a dehumidifier run and have a hair-dryer on stand-by. But as a dear friend has told me several times this summer, the bleeds only testify that this is indeed painted by hand. [I hope that you all can think that way too]
So with that said, a minium of three scarves by friday [well actually Thursday night] should not be to hard to manage.
Any thoughts on design? If I find I have more time, what should my next theme be?

Mystery Box

So at 11:30pm on Friday, I was checking my UPS status on my newest art supply order. And to my delight, it said that it had been delivered. Thus, one could have found me in my pj's in the middle of my yard in the middle of the night. :) Yes I was so excited that I could not wait one moment to open the box. {Anyone who knows me, can testify that I was not born with patience}
So after what seemed like 5 minutes of tugging at the tape, I Busted the box open, and voila ...
Yeah I have a really big happy face now..... and a really empty wallet [Come on rain!!! I need mowing money]
So for all of you really eager readers and future MarissaInk owners, there is much to rejoice in!

• 30!! six foot scarves!
• 3 new colors of resist: antique gold, red gold, and russet
• 7 more bottles of dye, with some unique colors: apricot, kelly green, and scarlet red
• 3 more bottles of resist: black, silver, and clear
• And 10 more scarf clips!

Ok, so now I need some wonderful people to get the word out that MarissaInk is ready for orders!  Maybe there will even be some kind of reward for those that recommend MarissaInk to their friends. Hmmm.... Possibly a "Buy One Scarf, Get One Half Off"? [I will point out that this does not imply that I will be cutting the second scarf in half... wink] Yeah that might be fun to try. So your mission should you accept it,  is to find one other person who wants a hand painted silk scarf and you could get yours for half the normal cost.** Or you can purchase two for yourself, why not? So send me an email at MarissaInk.

**MarissaInk creations are priced by: supplies + labor time [design difficulty].
Price varies from $25 to $60+, highly dependent upon the design difficulty.   In this BOGO1/2, the Scarf discounted must have a design equal or less complicated then the other.  At this time, prices are determined at finish, but an estimate will be given before project started. Please contact MarissaInk for more details.

Introductions

So apparently the newness of blogging has not worn off yet, because I have been sitting here for the past 20 minutes trying to think of something worthy of blogging about. Thus being said I found myself looking at my icon and realizing that you probably have very little background about MarissaInk and my self apointed mascot. So without further adieu, here is the one and only:

Cherry Coke! 

Anyone remember this
can design?

Cherry Coke, aka Cherry, is shown here modeling the first MarissaInk Scarf, "Like a tree".  Cherry stands at 3 feet, 4.75 inches [Cherry wanted me to be exact] and loves being my model. I found Cherry about two years ago, laying on a shelf at my favorite store. I immediately picked Cherry up, not knowing his name, and determined to take him home with me. However as I wandered more about the store, I debated if I should really purchase him or allow some parent to buy him for their child. Like any good saleswoman, I then strategically placed him in a Lazy-boy for some child to spot and started to walk away.  Two steps away, I looked back, and there in his eyes I saw his disappointment on being left once again. And as you well know, Cherry Coke now lives with me.

I am sure that everyone knows what Cherry Coke is named after,  but you might be wondering "Why?" True I do love drinking Cherry Coke, but it is more of that I have a family of Bears and they are all names of Soda-Pop [<- that is to please both the Pop drinkers and the Soda drinkers :)] I take a good look at the bear needing a name and I try to figure out what Pop [sorry, I am a "Pop" person] So Cherry has a redish nose that made me think of Cherry, etc. 

Posting on the Go!

Ok MarissaInk is now joining the fun of going mobile! This is the first post of hopefully many that will be typed in this convenient manner. And there is also hope that I will become much better at updating information and posting via mobile apps.

I believe i mentioned yesterday that I placed a new order for supplies. I am hopeful that it will not take two weeks and that they will be able to find my house this time. Last order UPS "could not locate my home". Their excuse was that it was the regular driver taking a vacation and that the substitute must not have known where my house was. I would say that the substitute must have just been lazy.
Anyway so the next task is to Finally get some of my scarves over to SullivanMunce since they seemed kinda interested in having some. For of those that don't know I have interned there two summers and it really is a great place to check out. They currently have a great exhibit on stained glass works that were created from glass of bombed out European churches. Click to go to SullivanMunce's website. 

Back to the Future!

Yeah, cheesy I know... but it kinda summarizes this post.

Like I mentioned in the post minutes before this one, I have technically received my first special order about a month ago, for Father's Day. My cousin wanted something special for her dad and I was willing to try anything. Previously that week, there had been a Father's Day sale at Dharma Trading and I had ordered a few ties, though I had never painted on one before. But like anything that you order, you need it sooner then you receive it. So after talking wistfully about making a tie for her, it just so happened that while we were looking for something to jump out at us, something DID.
A whole row of white silk ties at Wal-mart! So we talked it over, and she agreed to let me try. Since I had never done it, and didn't know if it would work we bought two ties.
The best stories are always when you are short on time, thus when I had 48 hours to completely design, dye, set, and let dry, it was crunch time.
The design was pretty straight forward, she had seen my Cars scarf and wanted me to try something similar on the tie. Her father loves Station Wagons, so after looking some up, I was working away with my resist on drawing 1980s Station Wagons side wood and all. Everything went well until the design was all sketched out in resist and it was time to dye, that is when I found out why I cannot just buy clothes at a store. The tie was Stain Resistant! Oh the hilarity!
Every brushstroke I made just sat there in a pool, waiting for me to move the tie and let it run right off. Its  very hard to paint something that is Waterproof with Water Based pigments.
I took a few hours to research online for any homemade solutions to make the pigment stay in the fabric. Finally I settled on painting very slowly, creating a very pale tint on the tie. It actually turned out pretty well, and if someone didn't know the story might even think it was completely on purpose.
Right now, I do have the ties I ordered and have tried a little dye on the back of one, and it flows just as easy as the scarves. But if ever I am in a pinch again, I will know what to expect.

First Special Order!

Ok, so currently I am hot and sweaty [Thank you Indiana Summer!]. I just ran across my field to deliver my first official scarf special order. [Four weeks ago I did have my special order tie, just in time for Father's Day but i will back track to that at a later time]. But anyway this is about my first Scarf special order.

My mother came to me wanting something special for her best friend Betsey [Betsey if you are reading this, Everyone was so happy to see you and thank you for joining the MarissaInk experience] So she came to me and asked if I could create something for her. I told her that it was on one condition, that even though  I have not sold any of my other scarves yet, that I could order more. [we will revisit that topic later, too]

Mom was kinda difficult to work with on the premise that she liked EVERYTHING I sketched up for her. [That's a mom for you :)] After settling on the color blue [I love working with my favorite colors, makes it even more fun to create], Mom gave me the following information about Betsey: she loves the water, boating, being outdoors, nickname Doodle.
I came up with about 6 sketches [and there are some that I will be trying out later, so keep your eyes open for more coming soon].
The final idea chosen was really simple and yet now that I have seen the finished project, I LOVE it! [I'm kinda jealous, Betsey, but I'm sure that you are enjoying it too]
Anyway, so here are some photos of the finished scarf:



Does anyone see the hidden image/word? Leave a comment if you know what it is, maybe you will win a prize.