Welcome

Double exposure self-portrait

You can see my photographs and original designs at my WEBSITE or my SMUGMUG GALLERIES .  My handmade artwork is available through my ETSY GALLERY. You can also see a large variety of products with my designs on them (sneakers, ties, much more!) at my ZAZZLE GALLERY.  Interested in learning to print on fabric?  See my ebook, Inkjet Fabric Printing, available through my ETSY GALLERY or LULU.COM.   Follow my Facebook fan page. Email me at heidirand@gmail.com for more information.

Okay, I guess I’ll just jump into this.  Now, a quick introduction — I’m Heidi, a photographer lucky enough to be married to a wonderful, gifted naturalist, George, who has the most amazing green thumb and a vast knowledge about animals and plants.  So whereas I used to have to search for things to photograph, I’m now surrounded by a menagerie of animals, including turtles, hummingbirds, butterflies, squirrels, and much more … and a wonderland of orchids, roses, native plants, trees, and much more — just begging to be depicted in pictures.

George arising from the pond

This is a picture I took of George coming out of the pond in our garden that he restored.  A couple times a year he disrobes and mucks around in the pond, cleaning out the algae and upsetting the mosquito fish and goldfish.

All photographs and images on this blog are copyrighted. Please do not copy or download any of my images.

Inkjet Heat Transfer Techniques : One-day workshop

Learn to make creative and unique artwork, crafts and gifts using heat transfers and your inkjet printer. We will explore several products and techniques to transfer images and text to a wide variety of surfaces. You will complete at least two transfers at the workshop.

Masdevallia orchid box

Sunday February 21, 2010, noon to 4.  Canyon Trail Park & Art Center, 6757 Gatto Ave., El Cerrito. $40 plus materials

Swallowtail butterfly tile

You can use heat transfers on fabric, wood, tile, metal, and many other surfaces.  It’s a versatile way to place your photographs and images onto things that you can’t fit through your printer!  For best results, I usually recommend using the  iron-on transfers that your printer manufacturer offers.  There is an exciting new product though, Transfer Artist Paper (TAP), that works very well for transfers.  You’ll have a chance to try TAP at the workshop. I made the frame for this lutradur piece with TAP transferred onto a canvas board.

Butterfly window collage lutradur and TAP

Another heat transfer product I like is by Lazertran, the company that makes the waterslide decals that I use in many of my art pieces.  The top of this box is a lazertran heat transfer.

Lisianthus box heat transfer

Here are some of my blog posts about using heat transfers:

Photos on wooden boxes, part 1

Photos on metal, part 1

Photos on tiles, part 1

For more information, or to pre-register, email me at heidirand@gmail.com.   For the complete list of my workshops and other events, go to the Calendar on my website.

Butterflies and Flowers of the Bay Area

We’re taking our show on the road! George and I will present “Creating and protecting local habitats for butterflies, birds and other wildlife,” a slide show with my photographs and George’s informed and entertaining narrative, on Saturday February 13th at 7:30 p.m. at the Visitor Center at San Pedro Park.

Monarch caterpillar pupating

Anise swallowtail butterfly

Have you seen my photographs of the life cycles of the monarch and swallowtail butterflies?  We’ll show those and describe the process of attracting, protecting and raising butterflies.

Monarch butterfly

Anise swallowtail butterfly on allium

We will also show many photos of other Bay Area butterflies and of plants and flowers that are larval hosts and nectar or pollen sources for butterflies and birds.

Bird nest in ribes tree

George will talk about how to garden to attract all kinds of wildlife and how to restore wildlife habitat, in line with guidelines of the National Wildlife Federation.

Pipevine

Join us if you can, we’d love to see you there.

Hummingbird mother on nest

Exploring Lutradur : one-day workshop

Workshop taught by Heidi Rand

New Pieces Quilt Store & Gallery, Berkeley California

Saturday January 23rd – noon to 3:30 p.m.
$34 + materials

Butterfly window collage on lutradur

Learn to create art quilts and other arts & crafts with this exciting new product that combines the best qualities of fabric and paper.  Lutradur looks, feels and folds like translucent paper and doesn’t tear or fray. It’s the perfect medium for a wide variety of sewing, mixed media art and crafting.

Egret in flight lutradur hanging

I will give an overview and demonstrate many ways to use lutradur: sewing, inkjet prints, transfers, heat gun, soldering iron, stamps, and more… You will have time to explore a variety of effects to create a mixed media art project.

Lutradur iris purse

Bring your favorite art materials to try on lutradur, as well as any photos, beads, etc. for your personal project.  Bring your sewing machine if you want to use it to sew your project.

Pre-registration required.  Please call New Pieces at (510) 527-6779 to pre-register, or if you have questions, please email me at HeidiRand@gmail.com or call 510.919-4652.

The next few months’ upcoming workshops:

Sunday February 21, 2010, noon to 4. Inkjet heat transfer techniques. El Cerrito Canyon Trail Art Center.

Saturday, March 6, 2010, noon to 4. Inkjet printing on fabric. New Pieces Quilt Store, Berkeley.

Saturday May 22, 2010, noon to 3:30. Inkjet printing on fabric. El Cerrito Canyon Trail Art Center

Saturday June 19, 2010, noon to 4. Art quilts and fabric hangings. El Cerrito Canyon Trail Art Center

Interested? Please email me

Handmade jewelry with your inkjet printer : workshop

Cattleya fabric necklace

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, learn to make personalized jewelry using your own images or artwork.  We will explore techniques to create unique earrings, necklaces, bracelets and pins from paper, fabric and lutradur that you print on your inkjet printer.  Each person will complete at least one project at the workshop, and you will go home with many ideas and new things to try on your own printer.

Swallowtail butterfly lutradur earrings

Making a personalized gift saves money and shows that you care to take the time to create something special for your friends and loved ones (or for yourself!)  Using photographs and scanned memorabilia of things in your lives together ensures that your gifts will be treasured and kept forever.

Swallowtail mandala cuff bracelet

The workshop will be held Saturday January 16, 2010, noon to 3:30 p.m. at the Canyon Trail Art Center in El Cerrito California.  Cost is $35 plus materials.  Please pre-register by emailing me at heidirand@gmail.com, or you can pre-register at the El Cerrito Recreation Department, 7007 Moeser Lane El Cerrito, (510) 559-7000.

Photo charm necklace

If you want to see more of the jewelry and gifts that I make from my photographs and designs, please visit my ETSY shop.

Digital collage on art board

How were the holidays for you? I had two 4-day weekends, bliss!  Between the nature walks that my husband and I took, a couple of holiday parties, and a lot of cleaning-up of my workspace, I only managed to get a bit of artwork done. While organizing my towering piles of craft books I unearthed an 8×10″ gessoed wooden art board and decided to transfer one of my digital collages onto it.

I had designed the collage a few weeks ago.  I started with a photo of a fallen tree with insect trails etched into it. I took the photograph on Albany Hill, a small local hill where monarch butterflies overwinter.  We went in November to see whether any monarchs were there. We only saw a few, sadly — we had seen many more there in previous years.

This is the photograph of the tree:

Fallen log

I blended the photo of the tree with a photograph of a fern that I took during a walk we took in Muir Woods.

Fern

In blending the photographs, I worked to make the colors vivid, and kept the fern image subtle so you only see a tracing of it.

Fallen tree fern collage

I liked the collage, but put it aside and hadn’t decided what to do with it. When I pulled out the art board, I thought it might work well.  Before printing it though, I had an idea. There are a number of designs I have produced from elements of my photographs with a great kaleidoscoping program called Kaleider. I mostly use them for my Garden Design Fabrics that I sew into fabric vases, purses, light switch plates, etc.  I generally don’t use them in my mixed media artwork or digital collages, but I wanted to see if blending one of them with this collage might work.  I found one of the designs that had strong simple lines. Coincidentally, the one I chose to try first was a design that I made from a photograph I took on the same walk we took on Albany Hill, of another fallen log.

This is the kaleidoscoped version of elements of that photograph:

Log Albany Hill kaleidoscope

I very much liked the effect when I blended them!

Fallen tree fern collage with Albany Hill log

Okay, enough explanation about how the blended collage came into being (people often ask me how I make my designs and it’s hard to explain without showing the originals, so I wanted to go into some detail here where I could show them).  On to my process for the transfer to the board. I’ve written much about using transfer artist paper (TAP), a polymer paper that I’ve had very good results with transferring onto several different surfaces.  This would be the first time I’ve tried to transfer onto a gessoed wood board. I printed the collage onto the TAP using the recommended settings: plain paper and medium quality. I printed it on the Epson Workforce 500, which I use for the workshops I teach. The durabrite ultra inks are pigment and have worked well with the TAP.  I forgot the first lesson of printing a transfer: REVERSE the image. Oops, but the collage is abstract so it didn’t really matter.  I placed the TAP on the wood board and began to iron it, using the iron’s highest setting. I could hear the transfer hissing a little, which I’ve come to learn means that it’s working. I peeled up a bit of the TAP and checked, and was delighted to see that the transfer was indeed transferring.  After a few more passes of the iron, the entire transfer had completed.  As with my other TAP pieces, there’s a very pleasing texture caused by the polymer.  To protect the print, I applied two layers of varnish and then went searching for a frame.  I unearthed an old wooden frame of exactly the right size that I had found at an estate sale. I think it complemented the collaged board beautifully! Here it is, see what you think:

Albany Hill digital collage

Lavender and rust art quilt – finishing and framing

When last we met, I had printed and quilted an art quilt from a blended collage of my photographs of a lavender flower and a piece of rusted machinery.  Here’s a photo of the quilt, and this is the post about the process :

Lavender and rust art quilt

Finishing and framing a piece is always a challenge for me. Since I used new techniques and products for the quilt (more about that later!), I wanted that novelty to be reflected in the way I framed it.  Rooting around in my supply closet, I found wooden framing stretcher strips about the right size.  When assembled, the frame was a bit larger than the quilt.  To finish the plain wood in a manner that would reflect and honor the quilt, I printed some of the elements of the lavender and rust collage onto Transfer Artist Paper (see my earlier posts about TAP), and ironed them onto the front of the frame.

TAP on frame

My next challenge was how to attach the quilt to the frame.  I decided to use some kind of ribbon that I would sew to the quilt and thread through screw eyes attached to the inside edge of the frame.  It’s not easy finding good screw eyes! My local fabric store didn’t have anything I liked, and I had to visit three hardware stores to find the size and color that I wanted. I put screw eyes in each of the four sides of the frame.  This is the top right edge, showing the screw eye:

Ribbon and screw eye attachment

I decided that instead of using premade cord or ribbon, I would make it myself.  I started with the image that I used for the quilt and designed ribbons, but rescaled to be much smaller because the ribbon would have to fit  through the screw eyes. I printed it on the fabric that I had used for the quilt and doubled the fabric over so both sides would have a pattern.  I cut thin strips and stitched down the center of each to hold the sides together.  I threaded them through the eyes and tied knots, working with each to get the quilt centered in the frame. This is a closeup of the ribbon at the center right side of the frame:

Ribbon tied through screw eye

And this is the quilt tied to the frame at the six eyes:

Quilt in frame

The last challenge: how to hang the framed quilt? I didn’t want to string a wire across the back because that would show through the gaps. I couldn’t use a sawtooth because the gallery that I show my work in (a plug here for the Pinole Artisan galleries) doesn’t allow those. I decided to echo the screw eyes used on the inside, and put two at the top of the frame.  I made another long ribbon, threaded it through the eyes, doubled it over and stitched it together. The framed quilt now hangs flush against the wall from a hook or nail. This is it:

Hanging framed art quilt

If you’re wondering about the back of the frame, it’s nothing fancy. I finished it by painting the plain wood with a few coats of white gesso.  I solved the eternal question of how to sign an art quilt (many people print labels on fabric and sew them to the back), by signing the gessoed surface with a pigment ink pen. This is how the back looks:

Back of the quilt

If you’re wondering where the piece is now, it’s hanging in the new show at the second Pinole Artisans gallery, Pinole Art Center Too, 2814 Pinole Valley Road, Pinole California.  Email me at heidirand@gmail.com if you would like to know when the Center is open, or when I’ll be working there.

Next: the exciting story behind the fabric that I used for this quilt!

Lavender and rust art quilt

Handmade gifts with your inkjet printer : one-day workshop November 15th

This is going to be a really fun workshop.  I’ll show you how to make personalized gifts (for friends and family or for yourself!) using your own photographs, designs, or other material and your home printer.

Fabric on tote bag

 We’ll explore a  variety of different techniques to create unique gifts, like printing on fabric and other special surfaces ideal for making presents.  Each person will complete at least one project at the workshop, and you’ll go home with many ideas and new things to try on your own printer.  There’s plenty of time before the holidays to create gifts for everyone on your list!

Lavender sachet

When you make a personalized gift you can save money and show that you care to take the time to create something special for your loved ones.

Fabric covered light switch plate

You can use photographs and the originals or scanned memorabilia of things in your lives together for gifts that people will treasure and keep. 

Treasure bags with fabric iron-ons

The workshop will be Sunday November 15, 2009, noon to 3:30.  Cost is $35 plus materials. It will be held at the Canyon Trail Art Center in El Cerrito California.  Please pre-register by emailing me at heidirand@gmail.com, or you can pre-register at the El Cerrito Recreation Department, 7007 Moeser Lane El Cerrito, (510) 559-7000.

If you want to see the gifts that I make from my photographs and designs, please visit my ETSY shop.

Egret in flight lutradur art quilt

I took a photograph of a gorgeous Great White Egret flying at the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline in Point Richmond.  I blended it with my photograph of an allium flower in bloom, ending up with this collage:

Egret in flight

I printed the blended collage onto lutradur that I coated with matte-for-porous-surfaces Digital Ground (for more on that process, see my prior detailed posts about printing on lutradur with Digital Ground).  I thought the print turned out very well – the detail in the egret’s wings is nearly as good as a print on inkjet paper, and the color is accurate and saturated.

I decided to use the piece in an art quilt. I backed the lutradur print with soft batting and did some free motion stitching around the abstract lines, using a few different colored threads.  Here are two closeups of some of the stitching:

Egret in flight closeup

Closeup of stitching

For the frame, I chose an elegant dark gold silky fabric. The lutradur print is about 7.5 x 11 inches, and I added about 2 inches to each side for the frame.  I added another layer of batting to the back of the gold fabric, and did more free motion stitching to adhere the backing to the lutradur print.

I decided to use a simple pillow-type technique to finish the piece.  I chose a patterned sturdy off-white fabric for the backing, and sewed them face to face, leaving an opening to turn the piece right side out and small openings on both sides near the top for my hanging apparatus.  This is the finished piece:

Egret in flight art quilt

To hang it, I painted a wood dowel with dark gold paint, and slid it through the openings at the top.  I wrapped a length of wire link chain around each side. Here’s a closeup:

The hanger

This is the finished piece as it hangs from the chain:

Egret in flight art quilt

A word about inspiration and motivation! I printed this piece months ago, but it had been lying in my “to make into something” pile since then. I’ll be teaching a workshop on using lutradur at the New Pieces Quilt Store on January 23rd, and I wanted a piece to show their customers how lutradur can be used in their quilts. This was the result ….

Native Plant Fair and Sale October 10-11

Fawn lilies

The East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will host their Fourth Native Plant Fair and Sale at the Native Here Nursery, 101 Golf Course Drive in Tilden Park, Berkeley.

Other than a wonderful selection of local native plants, there will be local photographers and craftspeople with native and nature-related arts and crafts. This event is a major source of funding for the East Bay CNPS.   Over twenty people volunteer regularly at the Native Here Nursery, open year round to benefit the chapter through sales of local native plants.

Fair hours are 10 am to 3 pm on Saturday, October 10; noon to 3 pm on Sunday, October 11.
I will have a table both days with a large selection of my original arts and crafts works, including many new prints of native plants and butterflies, my fabric art, tile boxes, and much more!

Workshop : Inkjet transfer techniques

Inkjet transfer techniques : one-day workshop

Sunday October 25, 2009, noon to 4.  Canyon Trail Park & Art Center, 6757 Gatto Ave., El Cerrito.

Masdevalia orchid box

Learn several techniques to transfer images and text to a variety of surfaces.  We will explore using inkjet transfers to enhance your artwork and to create mixed media, collage and other works.  You will
complete at least two transfer projects at the workshop.

Swallowtail butterfly tile

For more information, or to pre-register, email me at heidirand@gmail.com.   You can also pre-register at the El Cerrito Rec Dept., 7007 Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, (510) 559-7000.