YAS contemporary lifestyle

 This is one of the block prints I'll edit for reproduction on fabric, cards and paper prints. Creative Commons copyright. Yasmin Sabur 2011. I'm taking a break from social networking for a month or two. I've got a to do list a mile long. Giving myself permission to start crossing items off that list one by one. And another little block print. Creative Commons copyright. Yasmin Sabur 2011. Here's what I'll be working on: Editing small stencilled and block printed strike ups for digitally printed fabric and other reproductions including cards and paper prints. I'll use Illustrator and PhotoShop for the editing. Completing the marketing materials for artifacts to be sold in museum and art center gift shops, and sending the materials out. Completing a syllabus for classes on dyeing and resist processes. Creating videos and tutorials for those same classes. Redesigning my web presence and trying to get a handle on it. Redesigning my print materi...

Old friends of mine from high school were in San Diego for a convention this week. First thing first, there is nothing like old friends. That they are from Chicago is an added bonus. Folks from Chicago will make you laugh, hug you and poke you, contribute to a lively conversation, and being from the Midwest, they eat! I had a wonderful time with them. The husband of the couple is a consultant for the SBA. The Small Business Administration is an unsung National Treasure (we have a lot of those, including Yvonne Porcella who I will blog about later this week). I first took advantage of the services and expertise of the SBA in the 70s in Chicago when I had a shop on North Michigan Avenue named "The Batikery." I remember taking a series of classes sponsored by the SBA called Business for the Arts or something like that. I also had a one on one business advisor from SCORE, and an intern whose salary was paid by a government program, CETA, no longer functioning I think. Congr...

The images in this post are the ones I’ve decided to have printed. The editing will begin next week. What a good day, this first day of studying, has been. I got in two good hours at Lynda.com. Deke McClelland has a set of excellent tutorials on PhotoShop CS5. Right off the bench he did a presentation on setting color guides. Exactly what I was looking for. Warning here, if you are totally new to PhotoShop this may not be the series for you. There are lots of different tutorials on Lynda, so shop around. You can try as many tutorials as you like on whatever subjects suit your fancy. Second warning, if you’ve never taken an on-line tutorial you’ll want to approach it the same way you did the traditional classroom. Set up a clear, quiet place to study in, have pencil and paper at hand, take notes, do the exercises. Use headphones if you have some. With video tutorials, different instructors will speak and move at different paces. I’ve dropped some because the so...

All Scarves 25% OFF  Fine, fine cotton batiste fabric with an hand rolled hem (I did the hand rolling) Originally priced at $60.00, now $45.  The yasmintoo! Etsy shop is having a sale on scarves during the month of September. All scarves are 25% OFF. This silk charmeuse beauty was $60.00, now $45. It’s a great sale, but more important these are the last scarves I will be listing in the shop . When the sale ends there won’t be any more. I love the pattern on this silk habotai scarf. Was $40.00 now $30.00. Facebook fans of yasmintoo! receive an additional 25% off for a total savings of 50%. That means $60 scarves would be $30, and $40 scarves are $20. Come and get ‘em.

All images are protected by a Creative Commons Copyright, 2011, Yasmin Sabur. I usually dye as much fabric as possible during the summer months. All images are protected by a Creative Commons Copyright,  2011, Yasmin Sabur. In San Diego the summers are warm enough to use the sun to set the dye into the fabric. (I work with fiber reactive dyes, that require heat for the dye to form a chemical bond with natural fiber fabrics.) Sometimes I am still dyeing well into the fall. Today I dyed the last piece of fabric for the year. Yeah! Ahead of schedule, well kind of. I'd planned to spend the month of August cutting lino blocks and printing cards for the holiday season. Every year I forget that it is too hot in the summer to work with printing inks. All kinds of disasters can and did happen this year. Well art is about exploring disasters and creating something out of them. So, I took many of the designs I'd cut into block and turned them into stencils using my ...

Adinkra stamping. From Go Travel Ghana  African symbols known as Adinkra are found throughout Ghana, a beautiful West African country on the Atlantic Ocean. On cloth and walls, in pottery and logos, these Asante (Ashanti) tribe symbols can be found everywhere. Stamp carver Joseph Nsiah of Ntonso, Ghana, holding an adinkra stamp.From africa.si.edu Originally created by the Akan people of Ghana (a large ethnic group) and the Gyaman (the people of a medieval African state founded by a branch of the Akan) of Cote d’Ivoire Adinkra symbols represent concepts or aphorisms.  Modern commercial Adinkra cloth. From Alison Jones  Modern fabric Adinkra are often made by woodcut sign writing as well as screen printing. The fabric can be used to communicate evocative messages that represent parts of the makers life or those around them.  Traditional Adinkra funeral cloth. From the Buchele Adventure    Traditional...