Ink, Print, Moo, Repeat: CreativeBug's Screen Printing for Beginners

Four or five years ago Kevin and I bought a Speedball screen printing kit to experiment with. Kevin made a few shirts, including these shirts for Team Battery Brewing, but I pretty much just helped because I found the whole process kind of intimidating... a lot of setup and A LOT of clean up.

But as I was browsing CreativeBug's classes I saw this class for beginners, taught by Hilary Williams, that used tracing paper stencils as opposed to blocking fluid. So I figured that it was more my speed. I have to admit though, it still felt like a lot of work. Man, this makes me sound super lazy...

Boo tracing paper!

Basically, you cut out a stencil in tracing paper, tape it to the back of the screen and pull your prints. But, I learned pretty quickly that the tracing paper was a no go. It wouldn't lay flat and the edges bled a lot (see left). So I upgraded to Contact paper, which was a significant improvement, but I still had to practice quite a bit to get the right amount of ink and the right technique.

My biggest struggle was positioning the paper... Our screen is kind of stained from previous projects so it was basically impossible to see the CLEAR Contact paper stencil in order to "register" the paper... which ultimately led to some guesswork/slightly off-centered noses. I didn't take any pictures of the actual printing process because I can't multi-task. The other thing that made this difficult for me was just the waiting around for my screen to dry in between attempts. I think people who do this a lot probably have multiple screens and a lot more patience than me.

Yay Contact paper!

Overall though, I think Hilary gave some awesome tips about screen printing in general. She did a great job of balancing simple instructions without making it too basic/boring if that makes sense. It was easy, but still engaging. I watched the videos ahead of time and then basically remembered the steps as I went so there was no pausing, backing up, pausing, replaying, to figure out what I was supposed to do. This is HUGE in my book.

And even though my noses were kind of crooked, I was pretty pleased with the results. I think this cow will look very cute in a certain cow/farm themed room we're working on ;o) And even though I had a couple of times (grrr tracing paper) where I was ready to throw in the towel, I'm glad I stuck it out. TBD on how soon I'll dive into it again, but definitely a fun first try. Christmas cards maybe?

Definitely another great CreativeBug class! What next? Embroidery perhaps?

UK Vacation Finds

So now that we've been back from vacation for two weeks, we're finally finally finally settling down and things are getting back to normal. May and June have been insane with work-cations and (hallelujah!) real vacations... tacked on to work-cations. I feel like calling them "work-cations" makes me feel slightly less depressed about how many consecutive nights I spent in a hotel, thoughts?

One of my favorite things about traveling is picking out cool, unique, memorable souvenirs. Related /unrelated, Kevin says my personal style is that of an old lady.  So here's what I got and you can be the judge. (I'll also mention I've been formulating a follow-up personal style post and I think most of these fall somewhere in my spectrum. Stay tuned!)

On our day in York, home to York Minster the largest cathedral in Northern Europe, we ran across a local artist fair. I saw this print of a cow and immediately thought NEEEED. The artist also had similar... we'll call them "up-the-nose-shots" of various farm animals. Kevin said I'd be sorry I didn't buy a sheep as well and I have to admit now... he was kind of right. Does anyone have a farm I can borrow? Love those sheeepies.

We spent several days in Harrogate, Yorkshire which is an old "spa" town and what I mean by "spa" is that there was sulfur water and old ladies came and sat in it. Hm. Anyways, there's pretty good shopping and I ran across a designer shop from London, called Cath Kidston. I loved the fun florals (cough, old lady-ish I knooow). After much deliberation, I chose this fun green zip wallet.

Lastly, we went to Edinburgh, Scotland where I learned that Scotland's main exports are wool, more wool and whisky. So Kevin bought whisky and I bought... wool. Since I'm not Scottish and therefor not beholden to any particular plaid, I chose this blue, yellow and white scarf. It's super soft so... thank you sheep!

Overall it was a great trip and I love my purchases. We did also expand our candy collection and when we finally dig out from under the ENTIRE SUITCASE OF CANDY BARS I'll write some more blog posts.