Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies!  
Today, I am sharing a round-up of my top 3 Valentine's Day projects to inspire you to make a special gift for someone you love. Below you will find elevated handmade projects uniting fine art and craft to bring out the creative in you!

This project is for the nature lover in you:) One of the easiest and fun ways to get started with Natural Dyeing is with these avocado dyed silk scarves. We will be exploring this in our Indigo and Fragrance Blending workshop, where you can layer the indigo with an avocado under-dye in the process.  

These heart-shaped dream catchers are one of my most popular and viewed projects ever! These were inspired by a workshop that I attended at CAFAM with textile artist Mimi Haddon. Please tag your dreamcatchers on instagram, so that I can see them!

These block printed cards were a part of the Make Nine Challenge that I participated in last year! I had so much fun exploring block printing on paper and I would love to share the process with you.  I also marbled the envelope in a separate marbling project. 

Coming soon, I will be sharing a Q and A with a block printer textile designer and she will answer all of your questions! We would love to know what additional questions you have about block printing so that we can cover them here for you! You can email me your questions in advance. 

Hey there! I have some pictures that I have been wanting to share with you. Would you like to see the results of our workshop in Malibu a weeks ago? This event is a part of my Creative Sundays workshop series, which I designed for adults to promote relaxation through creativity, introduce ancient art processes, and foster meaningful connection in a non-competitive way! Our Shibori textile night took place at 98% Angel inside of the Trancas Country Mart in Malibu. It is a hip and original children's clothing boutique, with a space for art-making in the rear of the shop. If you are ever in the area in search of one-of-kind children's clothing, I highly recommend that you visit.

When the idea came up with the boutique owner, Zoe to offer an adult workshop in Malibu, I knew this would be the perfect spot! With plenty of room and a very peaceful vibes. Our event was sold out with 10 guests arriving to learn about the ancient art-form of Shibori to create unique and stunning patterns using indigo dye. For this workshop, I prepared 2 different dye vats. We used a 123 Fructose Vat and a pre-reduced indigo vat using a basic indigo kit. Although, I prefer working with all natural vats, I have found the pre-reduced vats can be really handy for instructional purposes such as these. Next up, I plan to experiment with an iron vat. 

For this project, we used 20" x 80" long cotton-jute scarves. I fell in love with this exact blend which is 70% cotton and 30% jute fiber. They come straight off the loom in India and feature a small fringe on the bottom which makes them awesome as scarves or even as beach sarongs- perfect for Malibu weather and other beach cities! 

I begin the workshop with a brief history of indigo dyeing and background info on Shibori. Afterward, I demonstrate a few popular folds and provide visuals of the results. Next up, everyone gets busy folding and binding their fabrics. So busy, in fact that I do not have many photos although I will share links to that at the bottom of this post. For this workshop, I focus on Itajime and Arashi shibori techniques. For Itajime, I taught the accordion fold leading up to square and triangle binds. One person experimented with a radial folded Itajime as well. You can see her results below, the second from the right. Below at the far right, the fold is called the "snow flower" which consists of a triangle fold and a clamped rectangle. If all of this sounds like geometric gibberish, then I highly recommend that you take a class and you will learn more by doing it. Keep on reading to see more beautiful results from the event!

You guys~ I am so ready to show you these DIY Valentine's Day cards. This project has been on the horizon for a few weeks and it is the kick off to the 2018 Make Nine challenge. My goal was to put it out there for you to try it out right before Valentine's Day, and I would encourage you to try this, if you would like to print your own Valentine's this year or if you have ever wanted to create a one-of-a-kind custom print for your space. 

The total project took me about an hour accomplish once I gathered all of the supplies and it was very satisfying to make. As I mentioned, this is project is my first selection of the 2018 Make Nine Challenge created by Rochelle of Lucky Lucille. You can see the other projects that I have chosen here. Are you ready to kick-off the challenge with me? 

Keep on reading to see the full list of supplies and to see how you can make one too!