Using Moo.com to create unique holiday cards for friends and family by Kristen Dettoni

The Braille Series is inspired by the tactile quality of Braile and conveys visually coded messages. The pieces are handmade with the punch needle technique.

Home is one piece in a series of four pieces that started at my residency at Snow Farm, which include “Residency”, “Trip”, and “Northampton”.

Marigold dyeing is one of my favorite things to do in the fall. Every year I plant a vegetable garden and adding marigolds helps keep out some of the pests. They also add beautiful colors of yellow, orange, and gold to the garden.

Residency is a punch needle art piece. It is a color study but also has a hidden message. It uses the Rosicrucian cipher and adds color to the code.

Back before iphones and ipads, we used to use paper address books and calendars. I recently was going through some old bins and came across some of my calendars that I created using a few of my book binding skills.

Every so often, I get the urge to create a photo book documenting a year in my life. I find when I commit myself to taking a photo a day, I tend to plan a lot more activities to have more variety in my day. It’s a fun to do, but can be a bit stressful at times to remember to take a photo every day and then a bit time consuming to create the book, but always well worth it.

A few years ago, I stumbled on a book called The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone. I love reading biographies and autobiographies, so I was happy to stumble upon a book about what seemed to be a really interesting, smart, and brilliant woman.

I recently started dyeing my yarn with natural dyes. I buy my dyes from Botanical Colors. They have an amazing selection of colors.

Most of them are packed in plastic and some are plastic in plastic. When handling any powdered substances, you should be aware of the powder can become air born.

Since 1993, I started the tradition of hand making all my holiday cards. It seemed like a good idea almost 30 years ago. I have since tried to break the habit over the last few years, but inevitably I will hear from a family member or a friend letting me know that they have saved all my cards over the years.

Thanks to my textile geek club, I have begun to naturally dye a lot of my wool for my punch needle artwork.

I buy my dyes from Botanical Colors. I admit that I am not super scientific about it. I spend a lot of my days planning with business, so with dyeing, I like to be more experimental.

Being a designer, artist, and business owner, I am taking a lot of photographs. Typically, it is for documentation purposes, but I recently gave myself a small challenge…

I first learned of Solar Dyeing from an ACE Camp trip to Scotland in 2018. As part of the trip, we spent a day natural dyeing with Dwynwen who is the owner of Loch Ness Knitting.