wohm, wip and wwt

wohm: work out of home mom

I'm discovering that my days of re-developing Bamboo Village are shaping into a somewhat predictable flow... and that flow simply consists of 5-minute bursts of time in which to get things done. Maybe if it was summer, it would be easier - I'd be able to open the back door and release these little hooligans into the yard. For now, it's Pacific Northwest winter, which means chilly, often rainy weather, and since my boys are to a large extent still crawlers, I can't really send them out into the elements so easily. I am bound by their needs and attention spans (as all parents are!), and this means my time to focus and concentrate is very limited.

wwt:
working with toddlers

My workspace is in our living room - susceptible to hands with a taller and taller reach, which means I have to do a lot of stacking and remembering where I left things. For now, I'm bound by the limitations imposed by my mama-to-twin-toddler status and the cash-flow realities of a single, stay-at-home mom. Not that I'm complaining - it's working, and I'm getting into the swing... I just figure if I'm going to blog and tell you my story, I might as well be real about it! I honestly don't know how other parents working from home do it!

my desk.
i finally got a bookshelf that now stands next to my workspace so i can get things a little more organized.

wip:
work in progress

Given this environment, it's been challenging to 1) come up with new ideas, and 2) bring the ones I have been able to dream up into production. I have been working on some new things, though, and I'm pretty excited about them!

I am developing a line of eco-friendly kitchen linens, and one project I've long had in mind is a design to print on produce bags. I'm about halfway there - I've got one of the papercuts designed and cut, and it's this papercut that will serve as the main silk screen. I've got two I'm working on: one for veggie bags, and one for fruits.

eat your veggies detail

I've got a new silk screen burned and fully in the process of development of a new print and Moleskine design. I hope this one will make people as happy as it makes me: it's a lovely papercut showing children at a panda exhibit at a zoo... maybe it's even the Panda Preserve in Sichuan? Either way, it's a sweet image, and I think it would be a great gift for a mom, a babysitter or teacher... a sister... or just for the love of pandas and general cuteness. It's going to be a pretty special design, and I'm particularly excited that I'll be offering it on those hot new Moleskine cahiers in deep red and midnight blue. Stunning! Here's a little bit of detail from one of my test prints:


Finally, here's a shot of my pretties all finished and organized. Oh, how I love and adore things that are orderly --- I've never been a very tidy person, but wow, I really value it now that I have extra small people wanderig around! Just the sight of all these cello bags makes me happy.




Hope you're having a nice early December! Stay tuned for weekly specials, new discoveries from Etsy and 1000 Markets, and more.

new this week

New to Bamboo Village Press this week, I'm excited to announce I finally have a PDF version of my popular iron-on transfers of various styles of papercuts. I figured for those of you who are savvy enough on the computer, you might enjoy being able to print these beauties at whim, using them in any crafty application that strikes your fancy. So far, we have the acrobat girls, pagodas and Chinese girls, and phoenixes and dragons.

 I am also slowing gathering up my collection of Asian fabrics to offer through the shop. I've added a really cool Robert Kaufman print that comes in both black and red, some really cute, kitschy China doll prints (photos below) that will be up this weekend, a Kona Bay dragon fabric that's now out of print, more silk brocades, and some unique Japanese fabric in a lovely goldenrod yellow that I particularly love. I'm getting low on brocade yardage, so get it while you still can! Wow, seeing that all listed, I'm amazed at what I've gotten done!

 

Finally, I'm particularly happy to say I've added one of my own prints - the double happiness fish is back, this time in the form of small-scale prints. I posted about the process of making them here. These beauties are a limited edition print - I used all of the gorgeous, nubbly handmade paper we had on hand for this print run.

 

Thanks as always for your interest and support!

working it

Today, instead of spending the day wondering how to fit things in, I just sort of did it. This meant no down time when the twins were napping, and it meant an extra messy kitchen by late afternoon, but I got some solid things done!

I made my weekly trip to the post office to send Etsy mail out. I found the designs I'm going to print in a second print run and got them Xeroxed - this is one of the steps fors screen printing with a Gocco printer. Rather than spending the time required to clear myself a work space on the kitchen table (which is currently half-occupied by a baby blanket I'm making), I set up on the floor amidst all the toys and burned two silk screens. I also didn't manage to get it all put away before Max woke up, so he had a few brief moments of Gocco fun before I swooped in and moved my precious printer.

This weekend I'll be prepping to screen some double happiness fish kitchen towels. Hooray!

新东西- New Stuff - sneak preview

It's all coming together - new items are almost finished for the shop, just as I'm on my last few Cricket and Ancient Compass moleskines. I'm being a little hush-hush about what this is all for, but fear not - I'll be coming out with the whole story on Saturday! For now, here's a little preview:

a new 2-color printed moleskine, here's the look of color one:


The second is a new Year of the Rat design, seen here on some gift tags. These will be great for 2008 gifts, not only for new Rat Year babies, but also for all of your friends bearing the rat as their Chinese zodiac sign.

Rat year dates:

• 31 January 1900 - 18 February 1901
• 18 February 1912 - 5 February 1913
• 5 February 1924 - 24 January 1925
• 24 January 1936 - 10 February 1937
• 10 February 1948 - 28 January 1949
• 28 January 1960 - 14 February 1961
• 15 February 1972 - 2 February 1973
• 2 February 1984 - 19 February 1985
• 19 February 1996 - 6 February 1997
• 7 February 2008 - 25 January 2009

Here's our 2008 masot:


Finally, inspired by Lupin, I'm trying for a little daily craft by joining Crafting 365. I certainly accomplished the goal today! ^_^

ps: Did you see Laurie's new design? gah, it melts mah heart every time I see it!!

新东西- New Stuff - Crickets & Compasses

Here I am in my second week of self employment, and only now do I have a chance to check in! It's been a real process of adjustment, getting used to the new flow of time and trying to reorganize my space without spending a ton of money. Things are finally settling down, and I've got some new introductions to make!

Emblem of Courage

I've been working on this new design for a while - I had the idea a few weeks ago to pair a screened image of a hand-written letter in Chinese with some sort of symbol. I took the letter of introduction we received about Zhang Lin during the process of coming to sponsor her education and made it ready for burning a Gocco screen. Then I spend quite some time toying with which symbol to overlay. Too busy and it would fight with the Chinese characters. Too simple, I could end up with something meaningless. Finally I settled on the cricket, a beloved little beast in Chinese culture and a symbol of courage. Courage seemed like a perfect match for Zhang Lin, who has been through so much in her young life.

Last night I did the printing, both on moleskines, cards, and tags. They came out so well! I'm excited about posting them in my shop as well as using these cards in my Bamboo Village correspondence. Whether or not this story means anything to you, I hope the design will stand on its own as a beautiful print.


Ancient Compass

During the process of developing the cricket design, I was suddenly inspired with another design idea which ended up being a quick and successful print. I launched the Ancient Compass Moleskine last week and have met with great success and attention. Every time I list one, they generate more traffic than any other item in my shop. These are a great gift for guys - evidenced by the fact that every one that's sold has been purchased by men! Very exciting!

The design is a modified photograph of a fengshui luopan (风水罗盘） - a compass used in hard core feng shui consultations for determining energy flow in physical space.


More Cozy for the Coffee

Finally, I whipped up a couple more french press coffee cozies (one and two). These pretties have been warmly received in the shop since I made up the pattern last month, so I've got one on the needles just about all the time now.

December is turning out to be my best month ever, for more reasons than just Bamboo Village Press. I'm so excited to be fully engaged in this new endeavor, and can't wait to get more work done on the Educational Fund! Coming soon, we've got a new guest artist, and I will finally be able to do some writing about life in rural Sichuan, China.

新东西 - New Stuff - Gocco & Fiber

Happy Sunday! The Nadeau girls have been busy this weekend, making and finishing new items for the shop!

After a successful rollout of my hand knit coffee cozy last week, I've made two more - a knit one and a new quilted cozy in rich Asian blues.

And we were so excited to get the Gocco rolling yesterday. After spending about 8 hours on our feet, testing out designs and print quality and color, we've got two new designs by Laurie up in the shop! Click the graphic and check them out in full detail. We'd love your feedback!

here fishy fishy

New design for the gocco.... survey says?

What do you think?






ps: I'd love it if you'd sign my guestbook at the bottom of the page!

bat wings WIP

I thought I'd open the studio up today... I've been dying to start using my gocco for cloth printing, but with a schedule as tight as I've had lately, the process has been slow. This weekend, I got to start on the work for the first screen.

I decided that in the spirit of the autumn, I thought I'd use the weird-looking bat nuts I brought back from Sichuan in 2002. They look Halloween-y don't they? So, I took some photos, and then edited the best one to use on the silk screen.







Then I just had to print it out and xerox it for burning the screen master.

Today I made the screen and discovered the challenges of printing on cloth! First, the ink is really thick and dries fast, making it difficult to mix. As far as I can tell, the fabric inks only come in black, white, red, yellow, blue, green and brown. When I tried mixing the brown to come up with a more appealing walnut color, I quickly realized that this trial-and error process was going to waste a lot of ink! So I tried printing the brown mix and wasn't happy with the resulting print. So of course, I switched to black!















Now I'm pretty happy with the print. It does take some getting used to, though! Although I didn't want black for this particular graphic, I'm going to stick with it for now. What do you think? Is the image too weird? Cool?



ETA: Although I don't have the towels ready to show, I do have some fabric panels finished and they look AWESOME! I'll be posting them as supplies tonight on Bamboo Village Supply.

ready, set. GOCCO!

I don't know what the block was to getting another post written... I did so enjoy looking at those blue bottles, I think that might have been part of it, lol. This week, there's not a lot of news about Zhang Lin except that she's started back to school already and now I have to figure out how to get the funds over there!

Meanwhile, not only did I finally get my gocco, but today I broke it in! Do you know what a gocco is? It's a Japanese home screen printer, and it's such a revolutionary little toy, it's crazy. I was concerned about fine lines, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I could have even gotten away with even finer lines than the ones I drew, but I'm getting ahead of myself, here.

I took pictures and everything. This is just a one by one set of shots... there are notes about them all in my flickr photostream.

Step 1: draw your design, and set in the gocco printer. Load the screen.


Step 2: load the bulbs, and set that in the cover. Press hard and the bulbs flash (and burn out), burning the screen.



Step 3: examine your screen, a.k.a. one of the coolest things, EVAR.



Step 4: Ink the screen, set your paper beneath, and peel off the original.



Step 5: press the screen down, and voila! a print!



Here are the finals - the owl and the hedgehog. I'm less confident about the hedgie, so he's not been posted in the shop...



It has actually been a very productive week over here, craft-wise. There's been a whole lot of photography for my ravelry account. And there's been knitting... knitting "Luxe" a neckwarmer pattern I am loving. Here are 2:



Finally, my sister came to visit! We went to see Rufus Wainwright on Friday night, which was truly memorable. Niko Case opened, we were in an outdoor venue, and there was a glorious thunderstorm between acts. It was fantastic. And before we went to the concert, we spent some time at Rosie's... where the sister simply sat and inhaled wool fumes and fondled wonderful fibers.