Holiday Screen Printing

I can't believe its been nearly a month since my last post.  That was not my intent!  However, I was side-tracked by a family emergency and spent 12 days in Pennsylvania.  My 92 year-old mother had a gall bladder attack and infection that kept her in ICU for 5 days followed by 4 days in a regular room and now is in rehab.  It was a tough time but she is getting better every day.  Since I've been home, I've been trying to catch up on Christmas preparations, so the blog has fallen by the wayside. 

When I left town, Elizabeth and I were preparing for a holiday Open House at Artistic Artifacts.  We planned a demo/make & take of holiday postcards and gift tags.  I found some copyright free vintage holiday images that I made into screens and we purchased card stock postcards & tags.  We used Speedball printing ink in red, green, gold, silver & white.  Unfortunately I had to leave town before the event, but Elizabeth carried on without me.  Here are some pictures of printed cards and tags.

"Cravings"

I've been part of a postcard swap group for several years.  Our group keeps dwindling but we are still at it, twice a year. Our most recent exchange was due May 31, and not all have posted, but thought I'd share mine and the ones I have received.

 As noted in the title our theme was Cravings.  I couldn't get past the first thing that came to mind, which was, of course, chocolate!  I found a piece of fabric that reminded me of dark, rick chocolate, and made a thermofax screen of the words "dark chocolate".  I used a discharge paste to print the screen in the center of each 4 x 6 rectangle and after fusing to timtex, did a double row of stitching to resemble a chocolate bar.  Simple, but effective I think  I love the way the discharge turned out.  With discharge, you never know what you'll get - it depends on the dyes used in the fabric.

 This is Lois B's card - like me, Lois craves chocolate.  She really wants to be slimmer, but the craving usually wins.  I definitely empathize!

 

Sherry W. craves an English Cottage Garden.  She is working on a real one, but in the meantime created this delightful piece.

Cathy T. made this lovely card depicting a butterfly flying free from flower to flower - she craves that ability to fly free for herself.  Read more about Cathy's cards and process on her blog.

How Do You View Time?

This was the topic of the latest postcard exchange, and above is a finished card. I started with a piece of rusted fabric cut into 3 8 1/2" x 11" sheets that I ironed onto freezer paper so that I could print text on them.  I created a page of sayings about time in various fonts, and then in order to get  3 cards out of each sheet with the printing reading horizontally on each, I turned the text into an image that I could shrink and copy with the opposite orientation on one end of the page, as shown in the pictures below.

The next step was to stencil with a clock stencil that contained several different clock images. Then I cut the large sheets into 3, 4 x 6 " pieces.  The focal point for the cards is an image from a book of African designs, one that I felt was representative of infinitiy, having no real beginning or end.  That image was screen printed in the center of each piece.  After fusing each piece to timtex, I machine stitched the central image.

  A card stock backing was fused to the back of the cards and they were finished off with a machine satin stitch on the edges.  Then mailed off to the rest of the swap group!

Myth Postcard

I sent out my postcards to my swap group last week, only a month late; thank goodness they are an understanding group!  The theme for this swap was "Myth".  My interpretation centers on Athena.  You can read her story on the back of the card in the third photo.

The background fabric is hand dyed cotton.  The image of the Parthenon is printed on Extravorganza and fused to the background.  The olive branch is stenciled, and the owl is screen printed with a thermofax screen created from a photo by Elizabeth Gibson.

I am very pleased with how these turned out.

Postcard Close-up

I finally found a way to keep a picture in landscape view.  By opening it in photoshop elements and saving it as a png file instead of jpg, it maintained the landscape orientation.  Here's a close-up of the postcards in the previous post.  This photo was a really lucky shot.  The mother bird kept flying in with worms to feed the babies, and flying off again.  It took many hours to get this one shot!

Postcard Revealed

Here's the set of postcards that I previewed with a snippet a few days ago. The theme of this exchange is 6 degrees of separation from the word "seed"; in other words, start with seed, and take 6 "steps" in any direction for what is depicted on the card. My progression was seed, sapling, tree, branches, nest, bird. I'm curious to see what direction the other participants take! Techniques: a gelatin print background and screen printed birds; the print of the birds is done with a thermofax screen made from a photo I took.

I've been trying to add another image of a single card, but blogger keeps turning my horizontal picture to vertical orientation and I can't find a way to turn it back.  Anyone know how to fix that?

Stink Bugs!

I see it's been over a month since I added to the blog - my intention was at least once a week!  I'll try to do better!

These are my "Bloomin' Stink Bugs!", postcards that I did for a Virginia Consortium of Quilters postcard swap.  I used the shield shape of the stink bug's body in 2 sizes to create a flower-like design and screen-printed it on a hand-dyed fabric that has a first layer of gelatin plate printing.  Paints are Jacquard Lumiere textile paint.  Machine stitching enhances the flower design.