Shazbot and a giveaway

One of the best things for me - beating off stiff competition - about being at a music festival, is seeing all the different t-shirts people wear. Funny or serious, new bands, old or obscure ones, it's like the culture department of people's brains walking towards you. 

Trending at Glastonbury this year were Breaking Bad t-shirts, especially this one: 

And it got me thinking about drawing and how, mixed with a t-shirt, there's really no better way to say what you want to say.

Someone doing this brilliantly at the moment is my friend Simeon with his Black Score t-shirt label. I'm lucky to own this beauty:

And this one, which came along with me to Glastonbury and everywhere else I've been this summer:

I love it so much. 

My brother and I used to have a VHS tape of 'Robin Williams Live at the Met' and we would watch it until we were crying and sore from laughing and the tape broke. 

We didn't understand everything, but we didn't need to. He was just so funny. Like the essence of funny. We'd try and do Mork's hand sign with our small hands. My brother could always do it better than me. He could also swim like the Man from Atlantis.

Thinking about all this, I made some drawings. It felt so good to sit quietly and draw. I thought a lot about this article.

From the drawings, I did this on a spare babygro I had lying around with a Sharpie (a textile one for marking laundry):

The best way to do this is to make a screen and screen print it - you can get any effect you want that way - but for quick and dirty printing, it doesn't look too bad does it?

I don't know any 0-3 month babies at the moment so if anyone wants it drop me a line and it's yours. Leave a comment or email me.

printing

As I mentioned before in this post, I have been so enjoying Christine Schmidt's 'Print Workshop' book. This is another step in my recent printmaking odyssey.

I realised there was a printmaking-shaped gap in my knowledge and experience. To that end, I did a course here in etching, which was pricey but great. Then a longer one here in all kinds of printmaking (I was pregnant at the time so could unfortunately not do some of the more noxious processes), and that was fantastic. Recently, I did a screenprinting day here and loved it. This was the result:

My own personal Pink Floyd cover. I believe this kind of recursive image is known as the Droste effect. Thank you wikipedia.

I think what I love so much about printmaking is that although the end product is your basic, flat picture, the process is more akin to craft. Very handmade, very technical and precise, and best of all, very imperfect. The etching process was like stepping back in time, I loved it. All that burning, burnishing, and smoking with a taper. Gorgeous.

One of the projects in 'Print Workshop' is to make linocut personalised stationary. On the rare occasions I do send things through the post, I find it depressing to scrawl something on a bit of scrap paper, so I thought I'd have a go.

Great. I must be a sucker for punishment as lettering is so tricky to get right, mirror image, small space and so on, but hey, if it is meant as a letterhead, what can you do? The 'G' is a bit of a dog's dinner, but otherwise I am quite pleased with the result. 

I worked on the kitchen table and it was lovely. I had precisely 37 minutes for the printing part whilst two babies slept - only one was mine - and it was a good reminder of how quickly you can crank them out. 

Very satisfying to see them all hanging out to dry.

I can't decide whether or not to crop off the bits at the top, I like their rawness but am not sure my bank would. Although, I can't honestly see myself wasting these on the bank.

Thank you very much - a giveaway.

In the corners of the blogosphere I frequent, I had heard whispers about this wonderful book. I bought it with my birthday book token (thanks Mum and Dad) and love it already.

On the back it says: 'This is a book for low budgets and high ambition'. Well. Christine Schmidt suggests you use any old thing to print on, and that working from your kitchen table is just fine, and she gently holds your hand as she takes you through some fairly sophisticated techniques. I am a Christine fan.

I decided to try some stencilling first. With the DIY spirit in mind I used some offcuts of tablecloth plastic from this project to cut the stencil.

The results were pretty blobby and fuzzy. Whilst I completely agree with her about loving the imperfections (as with all things handmade), I found these efforts a little too hard to love. The plastic curled up and did not lie flat enough.

So I bought some acetate which was a little bit of a shame, but I'll use them over and over again as they really did the business. No curling, nice and stiff and flat.

I used Rosewood font and did two stencils, one for the letters and one for the shading. Think it turned out well. 


I learned:

• Less is more (paint on the brush, that is)
• Acrylic paints and no water at all worked best.
• Using a stencil brush is not necessary.
• It's all in the wrist.
• Cats and stencilling do not mix.

One for Mother's Day too:

Next, I am going to try a lino cut and make some bespoke stationary. When I was a little girl that was my favourite birthday present to give. No self-respecting seventh birthday party was complete without a writing set. I'm starting the comeback.


With this in mind, I have three sets of three thank you cards to give away. Just leave a comment by next Thursday (April 14th) and I'll pick the names out from a hat. Thank you!

And for the new baby

A sleepsuit. Or a daysuit. He's two weeks old, he can mix it up a little.  Freezer paper stenciling is brilliant: quick, easy, cheap and addictive. At first it was hard to get hold of the paper and I eventually found it on ebay. It seems it is much more widely used in the United States.

What you are doing is making a stencil on the matte side of the paper, ironing it face up so that the glossy side adheres to your canvas, creating a very user-friendly stencil for you to paint on. 


So without further ado I bring you the first ever a year above the shop tutorial: 


Making a freezer paper stencil and print.
You will need:
Scissors
Scalpel
Pencil
Self-healing cutting mat (not essential but it makes life easier)
Freezer paper
Item to be printed
Fabric paint
Brushes
Iron 


1 Make your design. You can print on freezer paper so the possibilities are endless, but I think freehand is best, this is handmade after all.

2 Cut. Keep a firm grip on reality as you turn positives to negatives, discarding where the motif will be. It sounds fairly straightforward but strangely it isn't. Keep your islands (in this example, the spots on the toadstool) safe. I find it easiest to use both a scalpel and a small sharp pair of scissors.

3 Iron your stencil to your base. This is the time to position the islands. It will look like this:

4 Paint. Put a piece of card underneath to prevent the paint seeping through to another layer. Leave it to dry for a few hours as per instructions. If you can bear to wait, leaving it overnight is best. Iron to fix the paint, again following instructions.

5 The best bit: peel off your stencil and ta-da!. Now is the time to do any touch-ups.