Behind the Scenes: Tie-dye photo shoot at Mount Charleston (part one)

If you've been following this blog for any extended length of time, you may have noticed that Antho and I will take just about any excuse we can to get out of dodge. While we both grew up in the fabulous city of sin, aka little old Las Vegas, and have a lot of nostalgic memories in the city, we're always happy to stretch our legs or put some miles on our vehicles if it means taking in some new sights in a new location. We've gone to San Francisco and walked from one end of the city to the other (or damn near it), driven out to Mesquite together, explored Santa Monica and Venice beach together, not to mention all the time I spent exploring in Japan and South Korea all by my lonesome. There's a deep-seated wanderlust in us, needing to be satiated, so outward we go seeking adventure. There are certainly worse addictions to have, like crack or heroine, and our adventures in the great outdoors often lead us to discover fun new things we can capture on film. Like, check out this spiky little dude below- I think he's a tachinid fly, which is a fancy way of saying he looks like some kind of punk-rock alternative bee, but is actually a fly, because nature is a weird one with an endlessly inventive imagination. 

One of our favorite places to go near Las Vegas is Mount Charleston. We've been going there together for years, and find something new everytime we find ourselves there. Not only are the beautiful trees and flowers always changing with the seasons, but wildlife like deer, wild horses and burros all make their homes out in these parts, so sightings are not entirely unexpected. We even saw a batch of burros on the trip out, as you might remember from a previous post! While we typically make our way out to Charleston for recreation, of which there's a bounty of options (hiking, camping, skiing, etc) but this trip we were specifically aiming to try and get some tie-dye photos so we could update our shop inventory on Etsy. Of course, we couldn't help but to have some fun in the process! 

Art: March Tie-dye

While I haven't been posting about tie-dye as much this month, we are still certainly creating away! Recently we've been applying the dye directly to the shirts and then putting the ice on top so that we have a bit more control over the dye placement with the design of the folds. It's worked out pretty well so far, though I don't know that we use any less dye in the process... in fact, this might actually use more dye! Previously we would apply the ice first, then sprinkle the dye over the top and you get a very strong visual guide as to when you might want to stop as the dye immediately begins to hydrate and spread. One of the best things about tie-dye, though, is that you can't really do it incorrectly so long as you're having fun. It's such an abstract process that you can take all sorts of creative liberties- feel more traditional and want to do a single-color indigo shibori? Go for it! Want to make a prismatic rainbow alien smoking a joint? If you've got the skills to fold it, you can make it. 

Personally, I tend to stray away from overly intentional designs, like the aforementioned prismatic alien with a joint, because I get too stressed out and anxious in the process. I'm something of a perfectionist and from the point of choosing a particular image and trying to create it to the final unveil, it cranks my anxiety up high...and I don't want that. Tie-dye is supposed to be fun, relaxing, enjoyable craft-time. Doing the ice dyes is soothing, an exercise in patience that's rewarded with colors galore... I'm sure I'll try again and again in the future, to create that particular image I had in mind, but given the nature of the tie-dye it's better (for me, at least) to go in with some flexibility. Even if the design doesn't turn out the exact way I had envisioned or hoped, there's still someone out there who might love it for exactly what it is! Each shirt is unique, after all, just like people, and there's something kind of cool about that, don't you think?

We HAVE started to dabble in techniques for creating images on the shirts separate from the tie-dye, and we might experiment with screen-printing in the not-too-distant future, too. There's always something new to try, after all, and even if you use the exact same colors on the exact same size shirt with the same folds it might not be a perfect carbon copy, so the options are quite truly endless.

More photos below!

Art: Spring 2018 Tie-dye Round one

March is here already and Spring is starting to sweep into the air, at least here in Vegas. Flowers have been blooming since around mid-February, but cold gusts still blow through the valley from time to time and go about drastically dropping our temperatures with their touch. While we've done some ice dyes outside in recent times most are still being done indoors, at least for now. The bits of warm weather have definitely inspired us in some of our colour choices, though! We've been taking more and more of our photoshoots outdoors and I hope to continue this trend while the weather is on the milder end of this region's spectrum. And all this productivity we've been having... We've burned through several tubs of dye over the last month and are getting some fun new shades soon! Seems appropriate to do an inventory update every season if not sooner, as moods and aesthetics change and our supplies dwindle. We've had several custom orders come in, too which means ordering particular colours and items too, things we might not have otherwise picked up. One thing we're especially looking forward to is adding socks to our inventory, as was requested by a repeat customer. It always makes us so happy to see any of our items sent off to a new home, but it's all the more touching when people like it so much that they come back time and time again. Melts our hearts! 💙💦💖

 This all translates to lots of mail coming and going, and lots of shirts soaking and rinsing, but that's what we like to see! Summer is coming, after all, so it's not a bad idea to start picking out that summer wardrobe! I know I'm excited to deep clean my clothes again and work out how I want my closet for the upcoming hot seasons. It's always so refreshing to stop, re-evaluate, and purge away the unnecessary things holding you back. I like to consider myself something of a minimalist, and with Antho and I dreaming of living out of our van and traveling we're really going to need to reduce the amount of stuff we have. Step by step this is being done, and we've already gone from living in a two-story townhouse with a garage to a studio, so now it's just finding the little things and whittling out the fluff. I find the whole process soothing and love seeing a cluttered space become clean, perhaps my inner Virgo neat-freak coming out. In a small studio such as we're in now it's all the more important to stay on top of it. It's still a work in progress, so I won't bombard you with any clusterf**ked photos of our living space just yet. You're welcome. 😉

For now, enjoy these pretty photos of some of our recent creations and the behind the scenes process!

More photos below~

Art: February 2018 Round up and ice dye round four

With February coming to a close, we'll wrap with another batch of tie-dye rinsing photos to try to take us out on an upbeat colourful note. It's been a busy month despite being a brief 28 days! We set up our first pop-up retail tie-dye spot at the Bubblegum Gallery here in Las Vegas's own Art's District, we've processed several photoshoots and posted lots of new items on the Etsy shop, so very much tie-dye was made, had a commitment ceremony performed by Batman, lost our little buddy Zinni to natural causes, discovered our new favourite neighbourhood pizza joint (they have anchovies! Not every place has anchovies, and one of our first big relationship realisations was when Antho and I both confessed to liking anchovies on our pizza), my hours at my day-job were cut tremendously, threatening our financial stability some and causing me to have to refocus my energies elsewhere after being dedicated to the job for the nearly a year... Overall, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster of a month! In a lot of ways I have to say I'm not terribly worried about having the hours of my day-job cut, as I was able to spend a lot of time with Zinni while he was struggling in his final days and that means a lot to me. We've had most of our pet rats for their entire lives, from their very first squeak to their very last, and while it still hurts so badly to lose any of them I have to say that I'm grateful to have been able to be there for them from start to finish like that. Having a pet is a large responsibility, and whenever I take in an animal I truly hope to be there for them throughout our lives together. Humans typically outlive our animal friends, after all, and I don't think it's fair to shuffle them around from home to home where they might not lead such happy lives...and with rats, there's always that chance someone's going to use them as food for a predatory animal, a fate I'd hate to consider being possible for any of the docile little goofs we've raised. And to think, it all started when we spontaneously agreed to adopt an old rat boy named Pendleton. Anyhow, this post isn't about rats or day-jobs or any of that nonsense, we're here for the PRETTIES!

For the colour!

FOR THE TIE-DYE!

Hoo-RAH!

💖

Until next time, catch you next month!

💕

XOXO,

NAU

Art: February 2018 ice dye round three

Splish splash, ever more tie-dye shirts taking their baths!  It's always fun to try to capture the ephemeral process of dye runoff because the colours bleed away and grow ever fainter as the water rushes off down the drain. It's a colourful process no matter what shades we use, though some colours do have a noticeably longer rinse time. Maybe the dyes are more pigmented and all that pigment just takes ages to dissolve? Or perhaps we just went a little overboard when applying that particular dye powder and it ended up being a larger pile of powder than we anticipated. Whatever the case, there's ample opportunities for me to experiment with my camera and see what fun new angles or moments I can capture of our creation process and sometimes Antho will even jump in and play photographer, which is always great! Each and every one of our shirts is hand dyed by Antho and I, with occasional help from our friends when they want to jump in, and we put a lot of time and effort into the process. 

Beyond the dye process and rinsing, which tend to be rather photogenic and feature heavily here, there's a lot of time spent tying and untying, then sitting around the laundromat waiting for endless rinse cycles to work their magic before waiting around for another hour or two for the dryers... it's a labor of love, though, so even though it can be quite a time consuming endeavour we keep doing it time and time again! We've found that we can space out our tie-dye rinsing trips to the laundromats and do one large batch at a time to save some trips and time, but we rinse our newest ice-dyed (or regular tie-dye sometimes) shirts throughout the week so that they don't soak too long in the spent dye. Having Vanticore added to our family has made the time go by a little more pleasantly, too, as we can retreat to the solitude of our vehicle and relax or run errands between loads of laundry.

 We're happy you're here to share in the whole experiment with us and we hope you enjoy the behind the scenes peek! It's always so colourful, and it's fascinating to see how the different colours play together in the dye process. We've been experimenting with some different methods of applying the dye powder recently, and been fairly pleased with the results. It's not a super radical change, but it's enough of one for us to feel a rejuvenated curiosity and push to explore all the various results available. That's one of the most gratifying things in any creative hobby, though, in my opinion- there's perpetual room to evolve, learn and grow as you practice! The more you practice, the better you get, and the more excited you get to try new things that might have intimidated you before and on and on it goes.  

More photos below...

Art: January 2018 tie-dye round 2

Malcolm Gladwell once said it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice at any craft before one reaches master level proficiency, and while it's been disputed since it's initial publishing, I think it's a reasonable sort of goal-post for anyone seeking to really master their craft. If that's truly the case, though, we're going to be working at this for awhile yet... Though we started tie-dyeing some time in 2015 I'd estimate each individual shirt or fold design works out to roughly 30 minutes of hands-on-time with all the processing time included. I'd say we've hit around 200, maybe 300 hours? We're younglings in that sense, because there's still so much more experimentation to be done! Even though we've made over 400 items now, there's always so much more we could try, and there's always new colours and folds to experiment with! I suppose that could seem intimidating, and at times it has... when your budget is limited and your aspirations grand, it can be frustrating trying to work within the confines of your available funds- but, that too is in and of itself a great learning experience. We have a bounty of colours available to us right now, an amount I might even consider mildly absurd, but as a lover of colour I really can't complain. Every shirt shows a new aspect to a colour that might not have been revealed otherwise, and I sometimes find myself growing especially fond of a particular shade as my reserves of it dwindle to naught. In all honesty, if I'm happy to own 20-some-odd shades to slather on my lips, I can't at all be disappointed at a collection of textile dyes exceeding that! I'm not at all chagrined at having too-many-colour options beyond the logistical need to find a place for them to reside between dye sessions... and, alas, with our rather limited space for the time being I'm scrambling to find a balance between practicality, utility, and sanity. We're getting there with Antho's help, and once we sort and organise our back-log of new creations we'll have more room to work with. 

But the creative impulse is hard to ignore... so here we are.

Art: January Tie-dye 2018

Tie-dye, ice-dye, fabric art, textile dyes... it goes by several names depending how pretentious you want to be, but for us it's just good ole' fashioned hippie tie-dye. We've been going through so much ice that our local 711 employees have all started asking what the deal is, curious if we're having some epic party every night that they've not yet been invited to... And we go so often that our buddy Jimmy  has taken to always welcoming us with shouts of "Mister and Misses Tie-Dye!" when we enter the building. I have to admit that I kind of love it, though! I've been talking a lot about our tie-dye these days, probably because we're making some almost every night. If you follow our Instagram you'll have a pretty good idea of some of our various tie-dye shenanigans in real-time but there's also several Twitter accounts, from our official 710Visuals account to my personal account @shethatisnau and  +Antho Jay has his own, too... I try to update the blog steadily and regularly but this is a habit I'm still working on. I've got tons of stuff to share with everyone, though, and my goal for 2018 is to have a post every. single. day!! I missed a couple days in the beginning of January when I was still sick, but since then I've managed to get a post out every day. I'm working on finding my rhythm, getting the writing habit to stick, and figuring out the direction I want my blog to go in the next couple years. Yes, years. I'm at that point now where I want to plan for further and farther out into the future, and tie-dye is playing a large role in that, as is my blogging. While it's all well and good to have a day job to pay the essential bills, I really want to move away from that and get to a point where I'm less reliant on the whims of others for my financial independence. I've been pretty self-reliant over the years with my caricatures and art, but it's always good to have different projects going so that if there's ever a lull in one area you've got something else you can buffer with. If nothing else, we really enjoy making the tie-dye so it's always going to be an enjoyable hobby no matter what else we find ourselves doing.  

Art: Tie-dye photoshoot in Valley of Fire

Happy day-after-Valentine's day, guys!

Sorry, single friends, if our cheese is a little disgusting to you right now. I understand, I really do, but it's also a cheesy romantic time of year and we're a couple of sappy bastards so I couldn't help myself but to at least have some nod to romance here. And, not to sound too vain, but I think we look kind of cute in these photos. 

Here's something else to look at so as to ease your urge to vomit.  Our campsite out here at Arch Rock campground in Valley of Fire state park was quite photogenic and we found what was the perfect spot for us. The lighting was good for much of the morning and we were visited by an array of cute creatures over the hours. 

While we had spent the night previous relaxing and enjoying each other's company and a fire-cooked meal away from the city, once the sun rose and I had an adequate amount of caffeine and spontaneous cuteness in my system it was time for us to get to work. Luckily for us, the work involved here is modelling some of our finished tie-dye creations among the beautiful landscape. While in the past we've opted to keep our photoshoots on the simpler side so as not to draw too much focus away from the shirts, we realised that this approach is also a bit boring and doesn't convey much about our personalities or the kind of vibe we want our clothes to have. Since we're going to go camping anyway, why not bring along some of our stuff and snag some shots when the lighting is good? We were still able to enjoy most of our morning and the photoshoot didn't take so long as to keep us occupied longer than we would have been comfortable with. We were back in the city and the comfort of our own home by mid-afternoon, and that's even with the stop we made along the way... there will be a separate post on that, though, as it was too hair-raising for me to want to include among the outtakes from the photoshoot. The ones that we used for the listings are all up and visible on our Etsy shop, along with the items being modelled themselves!  

Lips by Lime Crime.

More photos below!

Art: Early 2018 Outdoors Ice-dye

For the last month or so it's been pretty cold by Vegas standards. We don't get nearly as cold as some regions of the country do, as many Vegas natives like to remind their relatives via Facebook when news reports start sounding off about snow out East, but we do still have our cold months. Temperatures in the mid 30s (fahrenheit) at night are about the worst our winters typically deliver, which is evidently just cold enough to prevent our ice-dyes from fully melting. We've been doing a lot of our recent projects indoors, which has worked out pretty well for those especially frigid periods, but the weather is prone towards warming quickly here and we're already getting up into the 70s again! With weather like this it's really hard not to want to be outdoors more often, as our recent camping venture may have hinted at. On the day these items were made it was quite lovely out so I took advantage of the pleasant climate and threw together some ice-dyes. We live within walking distance to a 711 (though the hill is quite steep) so there's ice always available. We could try to make our own but we have severely limited freezer space so I doubt we could ever comfortably make enough ice for more than a shirt or two at a time. No problem, though! I have a pedometer on my phone and have been keeping track of my daily step averages for ages now so I can't gripe too loudly about an opportunity to up my step count and work on my butt. Those inclines are great for your glutes, guys, so don't be scared to tackle some hills! I'm always doing stretches and squats at work, too, because I'm a giantess who's on her feet most of the day and a lot of the product in the store I work at is kept in cabinets below my knees or high up where I need to sometimes get on my tippy-toes to reach. Use it or lose it and all that, right? I try to stay active, whether it's creating new shirts or walking around. 

We've been cranking out shirts like mad recently, and I'm beyond thrilled with this development. I find most aspects of the process soothing, and love sharing the results with everyone! I'll be sharing more of the finished shirts here soon, so check back for that. For now, enjoy this batch!

More photos below!