Shop Vacation and New Embroidery Project

 So the last piece of the year has been shipped off and recieved by my lovely customer, Shadowyoai, on Etsy.  (used with permission)

The final product ended up being a little higher up on the head than I had originally intended, but it was still a really good product in the end.  And I learned a few things, too.  Always good. 

She took the customer photos, and sent them to me.  Frankly, she looks FANTASTIC in her kitsuke costume.  LOVING this look!! But as mentioned, this is the last one of the year, and probably the last one for a while.  

Shop Notes:  

So I am still closing up the shop here in a few days.  I am still debating on how I will bring it back, but I have some time still I think to decide on that.  I still need to take more photos, and fixing pieces, but kanzashi just hasn't been in my heart as much lately.  That and being sick is making me really not want to work in general.

My new kimono pieces came in, and the sugata is perfect.  The kimono on the other hand is about 6 or 7 inches too short.  I was considering giving it to my daughter or something as she gets older, but in the meantime I have a lovely kimono I cannot wear, and have kind of lost interest in my own kitsuke collection in general.  Collecting is fun, but I have no one to wear it with, and my husband DETESTS tying my obi.  That and I have had little interest in spending more money to push the kanzashi I am not so interested in making anymore.  I have planned a table sale for the last 3 years and have done nothing.  And not that TZArtizan is no more, I have no steady encouragement to continue my art.  At least with kanzashi. 

I am moving back into needlework.  I have tentatively lined up another Japanese Embroidery Lesson in March, and I have started a new embroidery project in the meantime with thread painting using long and short stitch embroidery.  

So what I have posted here, is a machine embroidery design I have from a book I purchased some time back.  It is really designed to be a 4x5 inch piece, but I have blown it up into a 7x11 inch design.  I used this new print and stick material I found for embroidery, and was surprised that it is working so well.  There is adhesive under a light stabalizer that you can run through an inkjet printer and do an instant design transfer.  

The fabric is a natrual irish linen, and its mounted to a scroll frame (that was not as easy as I had originaly thought it would be).  After I got it mounted and straight, I traced on some guidelines for the background with a non-photo blue pencil, which was difficult since it was hard to tell which parts were supposed to be background and which parts were flower stems.  I am using a horizontal direction, and basted down the guidelines so not only would the pattern lay flat (it moved some after mounting on the frame, it was not easy to get that tension correct), but that the lines would not rub off when stitching. 

I have started just a bit of the painting down the left side, as I am going to work the background from left to right.  I have purple and yellow for the irises, of course, and 3 shades of green for the leaves, a rust brown color for the fan frame, and different blues for the circles on the fan and the cord on the bottom.  

In truth I expect this project to never finish, or at least take me 5-6 years.  If my health doesn't fail me first.   

Work Coming Along And Vacation Announcement!!!!

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I have decided to close the shop temporarily after the shipping deadline for Christmas mail out (middle of December) and stay in vacation mode until late January. Lots of reasons why, but good reasons this time.

Firstly, I have a lot of personal stuff that goes on during December besides just the holidays (my extended family has a lot of birthdays, too) and in January I have girl scout cookie business.

Secondly, I have plans.  The store and product desperately need a revamp.  I am still deciding if I am going to take the store off Etsy entirely, and start my own website.  Etsy has been stale lately, but I do enjoy different aspects of it, like vacation mode and not having to deal with credit card payments.

Third, I need to re-do a lot, A LOT of my product.  It's not the flowers themselves, it's the mounting job.  Most of my early work is pretty terrible when it comes to attachments.  I have learned so much in the past year with regards to mounting and thread wrapping, it makes my old product look terrible. Not to mention I have product I haven't listed much less photographed. I also have several projects that are half finished, like washi jewelry, kumihimo, and ornaments.

So its going to be time for a big update.  Not planning on changing graphics though.


Now its time for work updates :)

Almost finished!! YAY!!!

So as you can see, this piece is really coming along.  I have finished mounting the frame for the bira bira and the shidare (you can kinda see the four spokes of gold wire for the shidare) and 2 of it's falls.  They are going to be an identical, repeating pattern of white on red, white on purple and white on white.

None of this part of the work is easy.  Mounting takes a strong grip that wears out the muscles in your hands, often leaving to cramping since I haven't done this in a while.  Also, its a lot of wrapping.  It took like 2 hours to wrap just the left side.  I also have to finish the wrapping on the right side which needs to come down another couple of inches.
The shidare part is the part that, I find, to be the most difficult.  Getting the petals to come together over a thin piece of nylon twine, without getting glue EVERYWHERE, and still managing to cover the high contrast colors underneath the white so they don't show down the middle....it's a lot to handle.  But these two I have managed pretty well.  I find the double layers are bigger and easier to deal with than the singles, so I went ahead and did that since it would give me a chance to lightly add some color, while keeping the white prominent.  (Her kimono is mostly white)

When it't done, though, it is going to be FANTASTIC!!!!  I know she will love it, although it is very delayed.  Like a month overdue.

Also, if there is anyone reading this who likes Facebook, I strongly suggest you check out the Immortal Geisha group, the Immortal Geisha Marketplace, and the DIY kimono group.  The Immortal Geisha people are AMAZING, I have grabbed some INCREDIBLE finds off the marketplace, and the DIY kimono group has some really great ideas for alterations and work arounds for wearing kimono!!!!  They are wonderful, caring people, and I don't say that often about people in groups.

Lastly, I am still collecting donations for Dimitri Conde to help his parents afford the burden of his Leukemia ALL diagnosis.  The local community helped her restore her house after it flooded with sewage, 3k in damages total.  But because of Demitri's condition, they have been back and forth to the hospital on many occasions, the last one requiring a two to three week stay in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Both parents are working minimal hours to provide around the clock care for Dimitri.  Please, please help in any way you can. :)

New Stuff!!!

There is lots of new things going on at the Emporium!!!

I just finished updating the store with new inventory and several updated listings.  I haven’t started on DeviantART yet, but I have all the pictures prepared and text has been developed.  It’s really a matter of upload and cut/paste and tags. 

I also decided to get rid of the ornaments.  Holiday ornaments will remain but all the satin brocade ones are now in the CLEARANCE bin.  Every single one is 50% off, and I hope they move quickly.  Anything that remains will be sent to the TZArtisan store in May.

I also will be adding a few kanzashi pieces to the clearance as well.  Honestly I just have too much stuff right now and none of it is going anywhere. 

I managed to jump into another craft, little pendants and charms made from my left over yuzen paper I have from bookmarks and the upcoming paper fan project.  (I’m still trying to find the right sized wood from which to make it properly) But it uses many of the same materials and adhesives as the kumihimo findings so it seems to be a good fit.    

I have another big announcement, I have been signed up for another surgery on February 27, 2017.  Hopefully this will really help me get back in control of my life, but I will be out at least a week to recover.  It’s a small price to pay for my sanity and physical health.

New Piece (Again!)

I am still waiting for my new chirimen order to come in, which should be either this Tuesday or Wednesday.  When it gets here, I can finally finish up that phoenix kanzashi that is enormous.   But in the mean time I have been playing with new fabrics I got recently! My favorite has been this rusty, deep red with stripes of golden yellow through it.  It has made for some great momiji kanzashi! As yous can see, the colors blend together to give it that great dyed effect you so often see on silk kanzashi.  The greens are tea green and yellow green. 


I did attempt to use the gold mizuhiki that I purchased to make the centers.  Bad idea.  Not only did it not hold, it was very messy.  I am still not certain how that traditional spiral is accomplished with mizuhiki, but I am going to keep trying on the side.  Meanwhile I went back to gold memory thread from DMC, which has a copper strand in the center of the wrapped thread to give it hold. 

I also a custom order and sent out some recent bookmark sales! I have been slowly restocking my washi paper here and there, looking for new patterns and cheap deals.  I actually made some decent money this month, though it has all been spent on new fabrics already. 

My workstation is a mess though, and before I start delving into new pieces again, I have some major cleanup work to do.  After I finish this wonderful momiji and phoenix pieces.  Then I am going to do a few barrettes and by then it will be the new year.

In other notes, a Japanese Yuzen (silk dyer) has struck up a friendship with me, to ask for Etsy assistance and to help him learn better English. I have agreed wholeheartedly. He is young, but comes from a family of silk dyers. The panels he creates are stunning works of traditional art. I hope one day to go visit his workshop in Japan to see how he works.  It is serendipitous that he happens to live in my favorite city of Kyoto.

New Phoenix Piece In Process!

First Attempt

      So I have been working this phoenix piece, trying to recreate a sort of mish-mash between a crane kanzashi and my original phoenix piece I tried years ago.  I have completed the frame, which is all thread wrapped wire.  The head, neck, and feet are all Rayon 40w Machine emobridery thread, and the tail is the nylon crochet thread I like the use for the bira bira
       The wings you see below are the new set and they are HUGE.   I have made them proportional to the tail length but at the same time they are at least 3.5 to 4 inches in width.  Not only that, but I have used up the last of my red chirimen in order to make this piece.  I even have two different colors of red in there, the china red and the dark red.  But frankly you can't tell unless you look very closely at the real piece.  I still have one more row of rounded petals I want to place around the neck to make it more full and to hide the underneath better.

New Wings

    Though I have made enough sales lately between custom orders and random items that I put in a new chirimen order! It should arrive next week I hope, so that I can have more red (and some other colors) to finish these wings off.  Meanwhile I will be working on the tail, which is the same colors at the original piece. 
     Seeing as this baby is HUGE i am going to have to eventually try again on a much smaller piece that I can handle better.  But it was fun to try a bird again.  Cranes are awesome too but I didn't have enough white to pull something like that off.  (I will once this new order come in.)

     I have a few more ideas on things I am going to make.  I am going to spend some time making stock items to build up some inventory for not only the TZArtisan shop but my own as well.  I also have that big stock of new prints I got from Ariel, the TZArtisan team leader, and the barrette forms and things I want to play with.  I still have that mizuhiki to try out, and I want to do some Christmas pieces.  I'm not sure I will get it all done this year, though.