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?

Out of Context Pt. 2

People say weird things... particularly at work. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes as part of widely-accepted Corporate-speak and sometimes because they are just weird. Here is a sampling, taken completely out of context, as illustrated by me :o)

Self-explanatory? Mmm, not really.

Creepy in so many ways. But really... what is wrong with that woman's eyebrows?

Yes! Breathe that Corporate bureaucracy in! Ahhhh! To be fair, these words have definitely crossed my lips in the past so can't be too hard on people. In part three... we'll take my mom's weirdness totally out of context. Stay tuned!

It's Raining It's Pouring

Something about being stuck inside for days really gets my fingers itching to doodle. Last week's Hurricane Sandy was no different. On a semi-related note, our new neighborhood is almost directly adjacent to an A.C. Moore craft store. Dangerous for obvious reasons. I recently maaay have purchased an 18x24" drawing pad.

Of course this created the perfect storm for some weather-related art.

In addition to my big new pad of paper, I also broke out some crayons from a 120 Big Box I've been saving for oh, like, five years. #crayolaconfessions. Here are some progress shots.

5.5x8.5" mini version completed during a particularly long teleconference. 

Pencil sketch. Kind of hard to see. Bailey was very annoyed because I was ignoring her.

Outlined in gray marker. Complete with cozy socks. Gives you some perspective about how big it is. My wrist was definitely aching after I finished each layer. Of course this is not my first weather related art. Let's not forget my Snowpocalypse 2010 bubble wrap painting...

What did you do during the hurricane? Any out-of-control art projects?

Sharpie Pen Love

As previously mentioned, Kevin was nice enough to give me some new Sharpies for Christmas. One pack was of these colored Sharpie pens. Sharpie pens are like the chocolate-covered-pretzel-marshmallow-chocolate of pens. That's how much I love them. A lot.

They are great for doodling during staff meetings... :o) But they aren't as expensive as the Micron pens I usually use for drawing and have pretty similar results. Here's what I drew last night:

Response 2: Paper Pushing and a Project

As previously admitted, I've been increasingly enamored with wedding design blogs, so my classmate Gina and I have been sharing our favorites since her blog falls right into this category. In her latest post, she shared some fun invitations/save-the-date designs all of which I love.

There's just something about fun notecards and stationary that really make me wish I wrote more than a handful of thank you cards in a year. Below are the note cards I used for Christmas and birthday thank you notes this year. Both were picked up from the Michael's dollar bin while I was there probably buying a whole bunch of stuff I miiiiight need.

In addition to note cards, I also love paper products in general. I am super envious of so many designers who create patterns for cards, wallpaper, fabric, you name it. One of my recent favorites has been Jessica Swift. I can't even remember how I stumbled across her blog a few weeks ago but I was instantly in love with her fun designs and products. So when she posted an amazing deal to get a pack of scraps of her beautiful paper I jumped all over it envisioning the many decoupage projects I was about to embark on.

Materials ready!

So here's the first of many (so many scraps left yaaay). I transformed a Mead composition notebook into something infinitely more stylish with some Mod Podge glue and a roll of contact paper. I picked out some coordinated scraps and glued them to the notebook, then covered the whole thing with contact paper. The whole thing took about 20 minutes. Here's the result!


Front

Back

I haven't decided yet what to write in said notebook (a chronic problem for me... buying beautiful notebooks with no intention of writing in them) but I love how it turned out!

Exacto!

For Christmas I got an Exacto knife (I know... who asks for an Exacto knife from Santa?) which has led to a flurry of paper cuttings, trimmings, pieces, scraps... basically a huge mess in my living room. I'm experimenting with the technique of cutting out designs and then using them as stencils. This had resulted in, uh, varied results...

This was the first attempt. These slivers are basically the easiest shape to make with the knife I discovered. However, the card stock I used didn't hold up really well which led to a lot of smudging.

This is a tree. A what? A tree. A what? A tree. Oh, a tree! Less smudging.

Last one is on canvas. In addition to the paint, I also ended up pasting some on the scraps on. Anyways, that's what I did over Christmas break.