The Down and Dirty of the Marbler Herself

As I continue on with my feather marbling, I photoged a few pictures of my comfortable conditions. Meaning my area where I create my marbled feathers. As you deduct, I am not an obsessive/compulsive person~at least when it comes to my marbling area. And of course I do keep the stove " marble feather free" so once in a while I can cook a meal (for my starving husband).



2' x 2' area on the dining room table where I prepare my feathers to be mailed



The other half of the dining room table. Notice the aspirin bottle hangin' in the middle

Yep, my studio, well one of my studios in the house~ good excuse to cook only occasionally!





Hand Marbled Feathers~Hearts and Flowers

New Series finished yesterday! Not listed in the store yet, coming soon.

Show and Tell~Purple Marbles

Thought I would share my purple people eaters! Now I move on to another color selection. Be sure to visit my store at www.QuillnAros.etsy.com/ . There are new marbled feathers listed there and I am previewing the "hot off the press" marbles here on my blog.

.

For a Moment, I was Bat Entertainment

3:00 AM I couldn't sleep~of course nothing to do with all the chigger bites I acquired around both ankles.
I was sitting on the back porch and I saw something swooping and swirling around the street lamp. I do know that we have alot of bats in the area, but incredibly I have never seen them by my house. When I first moved into that house, I was minutes away from installing a bat house, but then I thought about bat crap
(guana!) and I decided to not to provide accomodations for a multi bat family

As I watched, this little guy was obviously bouncing his radar off my head and (I didn't know it) calling his buds. Another bat appeared and another and another. In a matter of 6 minutes, I had 15 little bats in front of me swooping, and I suppose whooping~ a funny and startling experience.

The next night at 1:00 AM I took my seat in the arena and low and behold......... NO BATS!

                                     

Double Sided Hand Marbled Feathers

Well, it took me alittle while to figure this out. My first idea didn't work because I didn't realize that the back of the feather is so different than the front of the feather. I know, especially the milliners would like double sided feathers, so I called upon my zen and finally was successful in marbling the feather on both sides.

What I am showing you is the first set of double sided feathers~

now I will show you what I will be doing for the next, probably, month and a half. What you are looking at is my vat that has the sizing that is used for marbling paper. I use different kinds of sizings.  I have "laid" the paint on top of the sizing and made a pattern. Then I lay the feather on top of the color and voila'.

and that is the end for today. Everyone who wishes double side feathers, let me know. Large, medium size are possible!                                                                                  

Romeo's Opinion of Purple Nail Polish

Romeo is my Wegler's Conure, who at every opportunity expresses his very loud opinion when he wants out of his cage~or well, he expresses his very loud opinion in 98% of all situations which includes having me spring him from his cage.The rest of the time, he is a little angel. Romeo was at the bird rescue for quite a number of years because he was constantly screaming his name (which makes you wonder that his previous owners were probably continuously screaming his name too!)

But also, and much more of an obstacle is his cage possessiveness~translation, when he bites you, you bleed and it hurts! So in that case, you do not stick anything of your person into his cage, you let him come out and then offer your finger. The solution for the noise, well he has forgotton how to shout his name, but one has to ignore him (and not tear your hair out) until he shuts up~and be sure you are not tempted to throw him out the door!

Bottom line is in the first place~you accept the fact that conures are noisy and you try to keep the noise at a minimum.So....to go on with my newly learned lesson.......

We are having a heat wave, which means when I take a break from marbling, I am not going to spend any time in the garden. I decided to polish my nails and since I don't do that often, I am very slow. Proud of my prowess of applying polish at all~I even painted my toe nails the same color. And I am sure you guessed that Romeo was so freaked out at that color polish that he simply refused to come out of his cage, and he held out longer than I .  I had to remove my nail polish~ feed him several yums yums before he would even look at me again. I guess I am not surprised. This is the bird who totally rejects my left hand when I offer it to him! 

My little angel!                           

Lonely~Just my feathers and me.....

We are at step one~though I use both cockatoo and African grey parrot feathers, I decided I would start with the cockatoo feathers.   You will see what the original feathers look like and how I dress them up with marbling paint. The very, very beginning is first acquiring the naturally molted feathers.

Marbled Parrot Feathers~Experimenting with Control

Interesting day today with marbling my parrot feathers. I discovered that I can have some say in the results!
Also I discovered that I do have control of the colors. When you do something over and over, that's when you can try different ideas which will dictate the outcome.

The piece of marbled paper you see is done on my handmade western paper~cotton rag. First I worked with setting metal type, then I started making Japanese paper and Western paper~and now I have taught myself to marble "things". For this handmade rag paper, I used a paper mould with laid lines that were from the 1800's, something Thomas Jefferson would have had available for writing paper. In some other installment, I will explain what I did for the Monticello musems, the Jamestown museums and also the Holocaust Musem in Washington, DC.  To make a long story short right now, I have alot of cotton rag paper left over to play with (plus I have a Vandercook SP-15 proof press with 6,000lbs of metal type. That is a different story for some other day.)

Preview what I have done today! Remember, if you have any suggestions for color schemes, convo me in my store at www.QuillnAros.etsy.com/  Also keep checking back~I will be listing sets of feathers~all different sizes, each day.

Check out NEW in my shop~www.QuillnAros.etsy.com/