apparently only my index page is working at the moment.  Pardon me while I attempt to repair/fix things.

So here are the shirts I’ve printed the past few nights, I’m loving the screen printing machine hoping this next week I’ll have the patience/time to do a few multi color prints   Enjoy!

I’m fairly sure normal people don’t have a monster in their dining rooms.  Not that I had to have one in there to realize I wasn’t exactly normal, but I’m pretty sure it puts the icing on that cake.

So it’s not the monsters you’re likely used to seeing I’m sure, that is,  if you’re the type that see’s such things.  Nothing like the ones in the movies, but if you have a monster like this in your house, and found yourself dealing with the learning curve as I have (and ran into as many setbacks as I have as well) You’d find yourself beginning to have nightmares about the monster in your dining room.  It’s been daunting and  teasing me and constantly lurking there going “hahaha you can’t catch me!”  However, I am still refusing to let it win.

Most recent setbacks – forgetting to flip the film, wasting 3 perfectly good pre-coated screens and having one heck of a time with wash out.   So that brings us to *right here*.  I decided come hell or high water, tonight was the night we would successfully get a screen done, and actually print something.

Of course, the daughter in her cuteness and general way of being, came batting her eyes.  “Momma” she said in this ‘too sweet to be my daughter voice, which I’m fairly sure is her way of trying to play me (I thought that stuff only worked on daddies, but she manages to prove me wrong quite frequently).

Me:  (in that I know you’re trying to play me tone) “What do you want?”

Her: (in the same tone) “Just wondering what you’re doing”

Me: (slightly annoyed she won’t just spit it out)  “Trying to decide what I am going to attempt printing tonight.”

Her: (same annoyingly sweet tone)  “I know what you could print, and I’d even help” [bats eyes innocently]

Me: (realizing she has gotten to the point of her sweetness) “what”

Her: [sits close to me tries to put head on my shoulder to go in for the kill] “a twilight shirt with Jacob and Bella on it, not Edward.  He’s not cute, Jacob is much cuter”

Me:  [trying to not roll my eyes] “okayyy, but I only have 1 screen ready it’ll be a boring one color print”  I probably would have hesitated, and even flat out laughed and said no, but she even sat through all the training DVD’s with me (over 7 hours) so I figured couldn’t hurt to have a little help (not to mention my shoulder is killing me tonight after fruitlessly attempting to reclaim the screen I ruined).

Her: (giggles) that’s fine!

So we put together a design, printed it off and headed into the dark room to get it all ready.  I even reminded myself “don’t forget to flip the film!” and so what did I do? I forgot to flip the film.  I noticed this about 5 minutes into our exposure.  I was ready to cry!   But decided tonight! I would not yet again know the irritation of defeat, Tonight I would win!  So we decided to tape the text portion off, and just pretend we didn’t notice it made the characters backwards lol.  (It’s really not a total loss, I can print transfers as well, but I don’t yet have a heat press so I have no real use for transfers at this point in time).

So we taped the screen off, loaded up the ink and started working on printing.  Using water based inks for screen printing is considerably trickier than plastisol, but  the environmental benefits of doing such (not to mention the incredibly soft hand without the use of additives) make the inks better to use in the long run, and well worth the additional learning steps that we’re having to take.

The daughter backflooding the screen to keep the design wet while we set up a second print.

You’re supposed to keep it straight! (ok she’s still back flooding here lol)

and below is the eventual fruit of our labor, it’s not all but it’s the general idea of what we did accomplish:

Yeah I probably could have laid the shirt out all pretty, but I didn’t bother today, might make her model it for me later since this is the result of her overly sweet behavior.  Again, not exactly like the art I rendered in Illustrator, but turned out good enough we’re going to write it off as a success (sort of).  We printed it up on about 8 different shirts (have tons of them because I am addicted to shirts and have been for quite some time now lol).  and then I cut some fabric panels to later use in whatever twilight project she decides to throw at me, just to keep from wasting the ink we had on the screen.   Go team Venture! hahaha

And now off to dreamland, with a hope the nightmare is over.  Though tomorrow night, I will attempt to do my first emulsion preperation on my own, so I’m sure I will find more monsters lurking around corners, but with any luck I will scare them first!

Peace and love -

April

I guess I could say it’s been one of those years, but I’m not up for that level of let down right now.  I had expected my new printer to arrive yesterday and it did not.  The UPS driver only dropped off 1 of my packages, which is annoying and irritating, I expected it yesterday, I paid for it to be here yesterday, because once again I wanted this weekend to be one where I would get the chance to play with my screen printer.  I need the printer because the 3 I already have (grrrr) do not print dark enough to make transparencies.  They managed to deliver the cartridge but that was it.  What good is an ink cartridge without a printer to put it in right?

The screen printing machine arrived over 2 weeks ago now, and it’s been just one little thing after another getting in the way of my ability to actually sit down and play with it.  On the upside, I guess, I took some of the time and updated the website here, got a new banner graphic done, and tweaked my theme so that it reflected this new look.

I’m not so sure about the pink though.  I’m really not a pink kind of girl, I’m more of a green or blue girl.  maybe blood red.  Just definitely not pink.  and absolutely positive not a purple girl.

But I feel like I’m in a state of suspended animation.  There is so much I want to be doing, and so much I need to be doing and yet I look out and can’t seem to get anything done. I may work a little more on my site tonight, it’s probably a statement to the level of my nerdiness how much I enjoy tweaking code and playing with css, html, xml, xhtml, java, php, etc…  But I think it is an art form of it’s own.  Yeah, I know there is no physical canvas, but the metaphorical one is pretty awesome if you ask me.

Peace and love -

April

The daughter wants to be Alice in wonderland for Halloween.  She’s spent quite a bit of time obsessing over it, looking at costumes online and forcing me to take her to the Halloween costume shops that have popped up here recently.  Most costumes they make or at least the ones we’ve seen, are on the side of either disney or slutty.  Neither of which I can see her wearing.

Of course the logical choice in my mind is for her to let me make it for her.  Makes perfect sense to me… but not to her.  Given I have the talent and abilities to make an awesome Alice costume, that no one else would have, you would think she would be a little more apt to let me help her out and make her a wonderful costume.  But she is being a real brat about it.

So today, I guess in a serious effort to waste my time I sketched up (albeit poorly) what I think would make the perfect modernized Alice costume for her.  It takes the parts she likes best from the costumes she’s tried on and combines with the look she is more apt to wear.  I’ll show her the drawings here in a bit when she gets home from school.

I think even if she is ‘no go’ on it, I’ll probably make it anyway- how horrible would it be as a mom to steal what your kid wants to be for Halloween and to be it as well?  The image below is of the screen print image I worked about 4 hours on because I think it would be really neat to incorporate into the ensemble.  It includes one of my favorite quotes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and an image of the rabbit from the original illustrations.

Completely Revamping pardon the dust whilst I readjust