"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent; with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."~~Henri Matisse
…from The Crafter’s Workshop….
Almost everyone from the class sent home their leftover paint with me instead of taking it home with them…so because I hate anything to go to waste, I printed one morning. It’s a good exercise because I get new ideas while I’m printing (oh boy, do I love that grid stuff that I think is for making rugs non-skid). There is still some paint left…stay tuned…I’m going to make screens for breakdown printing next…
This is another of Mark’s designs. It took him a while to paint this design on the screen, consequently some of the dye dried and when he printed it, it had a breakdown printing appearance to it. Of course, I love that.
A pretty cool freezer paper screen made by another Beth in the class. I really like this screen design.
Well, I guess Mondays are lining up to be my “domestic” day. After making Mounds balls, I also made biscuits for supper later in the afternoon yesterday. Did some laundry and cleaning up a bit too. My husband hates to see things laying around and me…well, if I can’t see it, I forget about it and there are some things I want to remember I have to work on or at least think about so I can make a decision! (I recently found my Indiana sales tax form somewhere it should not have been…out of sight, out of mind. Luckily, I still could meet the deadline.) My “studio”, aka, the shrinking 9’x 9′ extra bedroom, does not give me the space to leave things out where I can see them and think about them. I pretty much use the whole house!
The thread came yesterday, so today I will again start stitching on a piece I am working on for my show. I should be doing that now, but well, here I am. I wanted to post some of the deconstructed results from last week, and I now have the photos loaded onto the computer.
I used different sized screens and some of these are overprinted…and may still need some more overprinting. And they have not been washed yet, but you get the idea. I really really love the breakdown look of this kind of printing.
The reason this whole piece of cloth is not printed is because I am pondering using these as 4 separate prints for wall pieces. We’ll see. They might need more printing on them.
Last week, I ran out of thread on a piece of art I was stitching on. Rather than take a whole day and drive an hour away to buy thread, I opted for an internet order instead. Of course! the company only had one spool of a color I needed, I found out later, and of course, I need more than one, so yes, I will be making that 1 hour trek in a couple of weeks, but I made a lunch and outing date with a friend, so driving an hour for thread won’t be all that I am doing that day. Oh, the down side of rural living…even if I do love it!
In the meantime, there is plenty for me to do while I wait for the thread….so I got started on making some prints on cloth. These will be deconstructed prints. First I had to create the screens. I smeared a few colors of dye paint onto the back of blank silk screens, then pushed objects that will create designs and texture into the paint. Then let dry for however long it takes. Purchased screens or homemade screens using framing wood pieces that lock together…it’s all good. I have learned something about making the homemade screens though. Do not use polyester sheers…they STRETCH! And you won’t like it. Use nylon material to avoid this. I am going to have to re-do some of my screens.
While I had the dye and the bubble wrap out, I decided to play. I do that a lot…try something new…see what happens. I laid my dry soda soaked cotton over the bubble wrap (to see how to soda soak cotton, see my tutorial on the sidebar), then laid a blank screen over it and pulled prints.
This deposits quite a bit of paint on the cloth, hence the following “monoprint”.
Since these two pieces use the same colors, they can be used together in something, but there is variation in the cloth.
I still need to finish one piece of cloth before I put my stuff away…maybe today!
But right now, I am making Mounds balls. ;=)
I had a commenter ask about where to get Thermofax screens made, so I decided to just do a post about it.
Thermofax screens are awesome to use if you don’t want to mess with the photo emusion process on silkscreens. They are great to use to make prints on cloth or paper with your own photography. I turn my photos into black and white and then darken the black as much as I can. The copies of these need to be toner copies when you send them off for making Thermofax screens. HOWEVER, I have an Epson CX4800 printer that uses Durabright inks. Believe it or not, I accidentally send these prints to my screen maker and she was able to make screens that work perfectly from them, SO that means that the Durabright black ink has enough toner in them to burn a screen with. I was amazed. But for most of you out there using an inkject printer, this won’t work. You need copies with toner in the ink, either from a laser printer or a copy machine. I hear the copy machines with toner are getting rare.
So here is the list of people that I know from the quiltart list who make Thermofax screens for a small fee. Get in touch with them! Your other option is to spend tons of money purchasing one of the old machines that does this and spending money on supplies for it. I find it easier just to make my designs or prepare my photos and just send them off to these gals.
Pam Relitz is in the Chicago area: rockitz@tds.net
Bobbie Vance is in the Indianapolis area: fiberartbv@aol.com
Lynn Krawczyk, I believe is in Michigan: tatgirl207@earthlink.net
7/26/11 Update…I just received a comment asking to add this link to my list of Thermofax screen makers: http://www.northwoodstudios.us/screen_making_services.html
Check them out!
I’m so bad…I haven’t blogged in forever. I guess I can just take you through what I have been doing the last couple of weeks… in pictures.
I went to Terra Haute to an exhibit that a friend of mine was in. We went to a place she had once gone to school and I saw interesting things to photograph such as this structure.
Interesting glass close to where we parked…
Then made lots of fabric beads and made earrings from them…this pair sold…
I’ve been making liner bags to go in Kay’s basket purses…a little collaborative effort…
I made ciabatta bread for the very first time…it turned out great…I love it…
We went to my family reunion…outdoors at a state park on the hottest day of the year…
That’s my brother…he was not a happy camper…
We left on Friday to go home for the reunion and were having AC problems at the time. Well, it’s Tuesday and we are still waiting for the repair guy. Lucky we are staying cool though.
Back to the “dye studio” and scarves and onesies this week…
Took this while the scarf was drying…
Pole-wrapped and dyed, stamped and a rubbing applied. The rubbing plate design was made on a piece of cardboard with hot glue. Great way to make rubbings.
This weekend at the market was a good one…weather not tooooo terribly hot and customers coming and buying. I sold 4 pairs of my hand made bead earrings…3 pair with fabric beads and one pair with felt beads. Hmmm…these could do well, so last night I made more beads before going to bed so they would have all night to dry. I had a piece of cloth with a design stamped on it in ink that I thought would make pretty beads…BUT..the ink ran when I applied the glue/water mix, so that idea didn’t work very well.
Bright idea…make beads FIRST, THEN stamp with inks! Ta da! They roll quite easily over a stamp image. Can’t wait to get these made up into earrings.
Last week I took advantage of the wonderfully mild weather to get out in the patio and work on silk scarves. I screened on most of them. I used deconstructed screen designs, glue designs, and paper resist designs. Some of my breakdown screens didn’t print very long. The new silk screens that Julia and I made worked well, but I see mine are starting to stretch a little. Perhaps that is because I didn’t review Kerr Grabowski’s instructions before we made them! This throw together scarf design turned out to be my favorite. Since I ran out of good breakdown prints, I used other screens and partial designs on it. Another idea has emerged for me to use for future screening. I love the contrast of a large bold design over smaller prints.
The other side of this scarf is a bit different, just because with printing by hand you can get lots of variety. This scarf was printed using all three of the types of printing I mentioned earlier. I’m having a great love affair with chartreuse and turquoise this summer, as well as all the blends in between the two that happen when one does not wash the screens between printing. This scarf is printed on silk charmeuse.
I create contemporary abstract art by making marks on cotton, silk and paper. That may involve dyeing, dye painting, screening with dye, discharge dyeing, stamping and other processes needed to express my ideas. Layering … [More . . ]