arbor lung

February is still winter. But my spring version of autumn's ribcage sweatshirt will not wait!

écharpe

Infinity scarves are the greatest, but my favorite variation is this one that I made out of red t-shirts. I love wearing this thing, it drapes so fly.

drawers/drawers

If there is a something hideous around, sometimes I just spray paint it a color in hopes of improving it. This does not necessarily work on all surfaces however, particularly if that surface is a reject from some kind of country mystique collection from the early 90s. I could make the mint-green checkerboard and pink peonies on this dresser go away with a coat of plum, but the flower pattern that adorned the top was raised, and it remained to make my paint job look pretty fucking terrible. Until I just decided to even things out by tracing the four lonely flowers with sharpies, and continuing the pattern all over the dresser. Like I just know how many toothpicks there are.

The insides got the red treatment:

I put a monster on the back, so I could have the satisfaction of trapping it against the wall. It definitely resembles a wild thing. Monsters all be wantin to wear the same outfit.

I've been experimenting with making jewelry lately. There are a hell of a lot of trinkets out there, and the possibilities for pretty adornments are endless.

I buy a lot of stuff on ebay. It's almost a problem; I have established systems and everything. Oh well, I'll just write a book on my strategies someday, and my habit will be legitimized. But seriously people, ebay is legit. You can find literally anything you want if you know how to look.

Take the spy camera, for example. I'm obsessed with spies, and so naturally I really wanted a tiny camera to play with. I think you can get mini digital cameras shaped like those espionage staples of yore, but no, I wanted a REAL one that used film and belonged in the gloved hands and trench coat pockets of an old-school spy. Yep, I'm insane. But ebay doesn't discriminate; it yields its varied bounty to the sound and unsound of mind alike. I found a genuine toy spy camera from the 1950s, which was in working condition if one could find the archaic toy film that it requires to produce pictures of indeterminate blobs. I wasn't one who could find it. But I didn't mind much, because ebay also coughed up a great, bunchy chain to string the camera on, and one of my favorite necklaces was born. If you can't use it, wear it!

Painting the inside of a chunky, filagreed locket seemed natural, so I did it. Plus, hearts are so boring, I always feel like they need to be dressed up somehow. Some sciencey how.

I'm a big fan of charms, so my talisman design gets a lot of use in repetition. It strings charms and jewels together on braided leathers and natural cords. You can variate almost endlessly within this idea, but I've only made three so far.

antique carved-bone rose and lion:

spider quartz:

another heart diagram:

butcher shoes

At some point, these shoes of mine got a curious, rusty stain on them -like a drop of blood right on the top of the tongue. I liked the way it looked, and although I realize the paint-splattered-chuck-taylor look is anything but innovative, attacking my shoes with a brush filled exclusively with crime-scene-red felt fresh. Fresh as a cut of meat!

I like to wear these with preppy clothes. Tennis skirts, polo shirts, stripes, collars, etc. We can call this look "sinister picnic" because doesn't that sound fun? More fun than "cattle rapist" anyway!

Leeching

Hey, throw that boring t-shirt away right now. Just rip it off your body and fling it from you without another thought because you know what you can do? With just a few tools and some patience, you can make amazing, permanent designs on cotton garments in what basically amounts to reverse-dye ghetto screen printing. I (rather pretentiously) call it leeching, as the essential part of what you are doing is pulling the dye out of natural fabrics to make designs. I love modifying stuff, and this technique works brilliantly on t-shirts old and new. Here is what you need:

- a cotton garment

- dye leecher

- freezer paper (this is what you will use to make your stencil. You can buy this at the grocery store; it's just a paper that is waxy on one side. You need this because the waxy side will be what holds your stencil to your garment)

- an x-acto knife

- a paintbrush or q-tips

- an iron

Recently, my sister, my forever-associate Keith and I decided to pool our attention spans and make some shirts. We all had design ideas in mind, and they all turned out more or less successful. Keith is the one who originally tracked this process down and mastered it; his shirts always turn out a lot neater than mine. I like to have him around on a leeching project, he reminds me that you have to be exacting in this process. It's easy, but a bit tedious. Keith makes things fun with videos, too.

It's For The Neighborhood: from Keith M on Vimeo.

So, to make your own leeched tee, here is what you do:

Step 1: decide what you want your design to be. When I was in Italy, one of the kids at the camp where we taught was wearing this great sweater: it was just a simple ribcage on black. I liked it because it was a knit, and the handmade look made it very charming to me. It turned out that she had gotten it at an H&M kid's store in Rome. Yes, I take fashion cues from Italian children! Sometimes. Definitely in this case; I wanted that sweater! But H&M has no online outlets, and even though I accosted the one in San Francisco the morning after my plane landed, it was not to be mine. I grieved a bit, and then decided to make my own. It wouldn't be a knit, but I could put it on a sweatshirt and I warmed rapidly to the idea as I realized that the one-of-a-kind look would carry over even better with this technique. ANYWAY

Step 2: you can either create your design in photoshop, or pull a graphic off the internet and print it on your stencil paper. This isn't hard to do -just cut the paper down to the appropriate size and make sure that your design prints on the non-waxy side. Or you can just draw your design directly onto the stencil paper. For the skeleton, I had to draw my design because I needed it to be bigger than the printer could print.

Step 3: Cut out your stencil. Do it carfeully, being aware of the positive and negative space you need, especially with letters. Since Annie's was all text, she had to pay special attention to how she cut out the letters. Keith's design was intricate as all hell. He had done it beforehand.

Step 4: Align your stencil where you want it to go on your garment, with the waxy side facing the fabric. When the placement is right, iron the stencil down. The waxy side will make it stick to the fabric, and your stencil will have nice, sharp edges.

Step 5: Apply the dye leecher to the fabric inside your stencil. The chemical will pull the dye out of the garment after it dries and heat is applied. But it will only leech dye out of natural fabrics like cotton, so leave the American Apparel 50/50 blend tee on the rack.

Step 6: When the stenciled area is dry (leave it in the sun for quicker results), start running a hot iron over the design. The dye will begin to leech out of the fabric. The heated leecher smells sort of horrible unfortunately, but you'll be rewarded with the sight of your design beginning to lighten. Keep applying heat to the design. Don't press the iron down like a damn waffle maker, but the more heat you gently apply, the more dye leeches out.

Step 7: Peel off the stencil. Check out your design. Have the treated areas lightened enough for you? Are there any bare spots? Sometimes a little more heat will lighten the design further still, and you can always go back and touch up under-treated spots with more dye leecher.

Yay! You made yourself an original shirt! Annie and I have already worn ours a little ragged.

Oh, and another cool thing about the leeching process is this: you can use it to pull dye out of a shirt with screen printing already on it, but the dye leecher won't affect the screen print. The upshot of this fact is that you can basically make designs under screen printing, like this:

That one was fun. I've always loved this Loomstate tee, so I'm glad this design turned out well on it. Can you see what the screen print is of? Not everyone agrees!