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Laura Murray’s Sensational StarBuilder®

September 14, 2009 ShellyStokes

Hey, paintstik fans! Would you even begin to believe that you can make an incredible star quilt without spending ages finding “just the right fabric” and then tons of time doing complicated piecing? You’ll be thrilled to know that Laura Murray has developed a very simple process that allows you to make complex stars as easy as “Paint, Cut, Fuse!” OK, OK — there are a few more steps in the process — but believe me, this is simpler than it looks. Yes, you really can do this!

Laura has just published a book called StarBuilder Inspirations to take you through the process step by step. Her book is not only filled with hundreds of gorgeous photos, but chock full of detailed explanations and a huge gallery to get you started. I asked Laura to share the story behind the book.

A tale of two brushes…

September 10, 2009 ShellyStokes

In an earlier post, I talked about cleaning brushes, but let’s step back and talk about the different types of brushes that can be used with paintstik colors.

Paintstiks are really dry (compared to liquid paints), so any brush we choose to use needs to be fairly stiff. For the most part, I use stencils brushes. But, all stencil brushes are not the same. Some have long bristles, some have short. It’s just another case of the right brush for the right job.

For the most part, I use two types of stencils brushes. One is a standard stencil brush with long bristles. The second is a denser brush with short bristles. Here’s how I use them…

Potato Peelers to the Rescue!

September 7, 2009 ShellyStokes

I had a lovely phone call from Shirley Suettinger in Wisconsin a week or so ago. At the end of our conversation, she said “I have a suggestion.” I love to hear that – because there’s always something interesting coming – and this was no exception. Shirley told me she uses a potato peeler to […]

Sneak Peek at New Products

September 4, 2009 ShellyStokes

Oh my goodness, what a week! I flew to Cleveland last weekend and taped a couple of new segments for Quilting Arts TV on Monday. While I was there, I had the opportunity to tape a couple of additional segments for the website, so we’ll be posting those in the next couple of weeks. (I […]

The things we do for photos…

August 27, 2009 ShellyStokes

When I started quilting, it never entered my mind how much time I would spend trying to photograph my quilts. And it really never occurred to me that I would resort to climbing on counter tops and putting myself through all sorts of contortions to get the camera in “just the right spot” for a […]

Clean-Up Tips

August 24, 2009 ShellyStokes

Whenever I do paintstik demos, someone inevitably asks “how do I clean up?” After playing with these paints for 10 years, I’ve gone through a lot of different cleaning products. Here are my favorites. Cleaning Brushes My favorite cleaning for cleaning brushes depends on how long they sit before I clean them. If I clean […]

More Beautiful Coneflowers

August 20, 2009 ShellyStokes

Once a month I join a small group of adventurous quilters called the DIVAS for a Monday afternoon meeting. We share our recent work, new ideas, work on group projects, and try new techniques. But summer is special in Minnesota, so our August gathering was simply a picnic at Becky’s lake cabin. It was a […]

A Summer Tradition

August 17, 2009 ShellyStokes

The first weekend of August is always special in our little corner of Douglas County (Minnesota). It’s the weekend of the Rose City Threshing Festival. The men bring all their (very large) toys, like steam engines, tractors and threshing machines. They get most of the attention for the weekend, but the women have their own […]

Simple Paintstik Storage

August 13, 2009 ShellyStokes

Lots of people ask me how to store paintstiks. Just about anything works. You can literally toss them in a zip bag and put them in a drawer. But lots of people want something a bit more “organized.” So here’s a simple, inexpensive idea from the Back-to-School section. I had stopped into my local Walmart […]

Lauren Vlcek’s Fabulous Faces

August 10, 2009 ShellyStokes

A couple of weeks ago, I received the most wonderful letter in the mail. It was a note from artist and teacher Lauren Vlcek (pronounced vel-check), from Colorado Springs. Her letter was accompanied by photographs of two of her journal covers with amazing faces. Here is a paragraph from her letter and a couple of […]

Rubbing Plate Portraits

August 6, 2009 ShellyStokes

I’ve been working with paintstiks and rubbing plates for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve almost always overlapped the images and made an overall print on my fabric — much like making a batik. But after making samples from the new Happy Holidays plates, a little idea popped into my head. I really liked […]

Got rubbing plates? Make patchwork!

August 3, 2009 ShellyStokes

I’ve been busy this summer working on a new pattern called Paintstik Patches. It started off to be a holiday quilt, but it’s really more than that, so I changed the name. (I just love being able to do that!) The pattern came back from the printer last week, and we’ve been busy shipping orders […]

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