Dreaming Spirals

Here we are … some of the fabrics I printed last year and just washed out.  I’m rinsing out about three pieces a day so even this is taking time!

I printed this one with a gocco screen.  It started out as an eraser which I carved to make a stamp, printed to make a repeating pattern then I scanned it into the computer and enlarged it and printed it out.   I then overprinted it with a screen made from a letter.  This is the washed out version – it doesn’t actually look much lighter than the original (some of them lost quite a lot of colour).  I think this is logwood.  Most of these are printed on silk.

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This one is a screen made from a photo of a tree.  I printed and overprinted it in three colours of natural dyes.  This one did wash out quite a lot but I kind of like the subtle effect.  This is the unwashed version:

And this is the washed out one.  Quite a difference, as you can see.  But I quite like it in parts.

This one changed the most.  It consists of two screens.  One is a gocco screen made from a stamp I carved of a bird’s foot.  I printed this one first.  Then the second screen is a blank screen with roughly torn masking tape stuck across it – it is supposed to look a bit like cracked mud. 

This is the washed out version – I like it more because you can see the bird prints more clearly.  The mud cracks are in two or three different shades of brown – this is just a detail of the whole piece.

I don’t think I have a ‘before’ photo of this tree, but it is clay painted using ochres from Clearwell Caves, some caves in the Forest of Dean which are also ancience iron mines.  I used soy milk as a binder.  The ochres seemed to wash out a lot less than the natural dye extracts I used.  It is painted on cotton organdie which is semi transparent so is a bit difficult to photograph.

That’s all I’ve photographed at the moment – more to follow!

A few weeks ago, Guenther Panenka of www.patchworkshop.de sent me a sample of a plastic frame he had developed which will fit in the Print Gocco machine to enable its use with unframed thermofax mesh.  He also sent me a few different carbon pencils.  So yesterday, I decided to give them a go!  I had a play with the pencils, shown below:

This is my original image:

I decided to stick with my reeds imagery.  The lighter, thicker marks were made with a Koh-i-noor Gioconda charcoal pencil and the thinner darker lines with a Phano china marker no 77 black.  I flashed it on to some unframed mesh and attached it to Guenther’s frame:

This is the frame – you’ll see that it is the same shape as the Riso hi-mesh screens so it fits in the machine well.  It is thin and flexible and went into the slots easily.

When attaching the screen, it is best to have a hi-mesh screen alongside to make sure you attach it the same way round!  I didn’t do this the first time so had a bit of reattaching to do!

I placed double sided tape all round the edges of the plastic frame and then stuck the mesh to it.  I then stuck sellotape along the two long sides and a small amount on the straight bits of the short sides.   For the plastic sheet which encloses the ink, I cut a rectangle off a cellophane bag and stuck it on to the relevant edge with double sided tape.  All this worked perfectly while I was printing.

I inked it up and put it into the machine:

Here are some of the results:

I think this last one was just after I had reinked it…

I plan to overprint these with various images, but you can see the amount of detail compared with the original image.  I was using 70 mesh thermofax screen – you can get 100 which is finer, but i don’t have any.   Sometime I will give it a go with a more detailed image to see how the 70 mesh holds up.

I also overprinted a few other prints:

And I printed a few reeds two or even three times on top of each other:

I could see these working well as a background.

And overprinted some decorated papers…
One thing to remember is to use ink blocking to keep the ink within the frame – this is a good idea always because it keeps the ink inside the printing area and saves ink, but especially with the plastic frames which are non absorbent – you don’t want ink in the slots of your Print Gocco!

If you want to order the plastic screens, go to www.patchworkshop.de and click on the top dropdown box in the left sidebar.  Scroll down nearly to the bottom and you will see it says Print Gocco. Click ‘go’ and it will take you there.    The site is in German but if you click the contact box you can email Guenther in English.

Guenther has also got a webpage with lots of hints for using his thermofax machines, a lot of which is relevant to Print Gocco users.  And he says that “the new Gocco-successor called A5 internally is (slowly but surely) developing”.

I’ve been a bit in the doldrums regarding creativity recently, or at least the textile sort.  So I had to force myself to get down to printing the next in the reeds series and it was a slow start.  But now I think I’m getting into it!  

Here is the sample piece I produced for what I want to do.  I’m trying to capture a grey, glowering sky with the dirty-gold reeds against it.  This is just a practice piece to help me see how the lighter colours of the yellow-gold will show up against the grey.

It is going to consist of many layers.  Here are the first two, not looking too promising yet…

Next I started with one thermofax screen.

And then another….

At least another 5 layers to go… This is a slow process, as I have to wait for each layer to dry before I add the next.  I’m using fabric paints.  But it fits in with my routine at the moment: lots of cooking food for teenagers and countless household tasks, packaging up Gocco machines (only three left now, the pile is going down!), and my least favourite, juggling with figures for the tax return.  Not so many visits to quilt shows or textile museums, though I did manage my first ever visit to Ikea now that DS1 has passed his driving test! And lots of family tree research, and I’m plotting a visit to the National Archives in London….

So, to conclude this post, here is my design board at the moment:

I meant to blog about the week I had at Urchfont ages ago but the summer is slipping away and I don’t know where it’s gone!    I went with a group of textiley internet pals.

Urchfont is a manor house in Wiltshire owned by Wiltshire County Council and is very grand:

While I was there, Sara taught me to spin:

Here she is teaching Gill:

I’ve had my drop spindle for a few years now, so I was glad to use it at last! 

I also had a go on the embellisher.  I decided it wasn’t for me, but I was glad to have a play.  This was the first thing I made.  It is roughly the size of an ACEO.

And the next:

Paulene also brought her pasta maker so that we could have a go at printing with it.  I printed a leaf – you roll printing ink on to an acrylic sheet, lay the leaf on to it with some paper on top, and run the whole thing through the machine.  So you get three prints – the first is the one on the right.  The next time you run it through, you take the leaf off and print the impression left by the leaf – that is the middle one.  Then you put the original leaf ink side up on to the acrylic sheet, put another sheet of paper on top and print that and the ink transferred on to the leaf from the first print then transfers on to the paper.  I hope I’ve remembered it correctly!  Now I want to get a pasta maker to try it again!

This is the second attempt using a ginkgo leaf that I found in the gardens.  I think I used too much ink but I like the abstract result!

More pics to come!

I read on the Blade rubber stamps blog that the latest issue of Scrapbook and Cards magazine is available as a free download if you click on the link.

Offering free downloads seems to be a recent trend for magazines but I’m not complaining!

Blade Rubber Stamps is an awesome shop in London that I’ve visited a couple of times. It’s near the British Museum. It seems to sell a lot of arty stamps, not just the usual cutesy ones which seem to be the only stamps I can buy in shops locally.

I wrote this post for the Ecoetsy team blog last year and thought I’d repost it here in case any of you feel like having a play day printing – I’ve got so many envelopes which arrive and look almost as good as new, especially those which come with lots of pretty stamps on; I can’t bring myself to throw them away so if I’m not careful I get drowned in paper. So here’s something to do with it. Those envelopes with stamps could be altered to use in journalling or scrapbooking… I wrote the article originally for Etsy sellers who’d be using it for packaging but you could easily use them in handmade books or tags… I’m sure your imagination could supply other uses… So here goes..

We often think about how we can recycle packaging but what about other everyday objects that we might otherwise throw away? Have you ever thought of using them to print with, to make cool tags or decorative papers, rather than buying these items ready printed? In this tutorial I am going to show you how to use bubble wrap, plastic packaging material and other odds and ends to make your packaging pretty. If you get in the habit of looking for interesting textures and shapes, you will be able to find loads of inspiration.

The best base for printing is a slightly soft one. I do a lot of screenprinting, so I already have one made of a piece of wood covered with a couple of layers of thick fabric and a piece of wipe-clean plastic (not that I seem to wipe it clean very much as you can see from the photo!). But a piece of that foamy stuff you can buying for washing dishes would do as well, or even a folded newspaper.

Here are my printing materials – one is some black plastic moulded with an interesting grid pattern, bubble wrap in two different sizes, and one of those polystyrene pizza bases. They are brilliant for creating texture, as you will see later.

You will need some paper or a pile of old envelopes (which is what I am using here). And some paint – I used Golden acrylic paint because I already have it for my art but you could use poster paint or children’s paint. If you want to use the decorative papers for packaging, tags, or similar, acrylic paint is best because once it is dry, it won’t wash off or, more importantly, transfer to your products and stain them. Here I diluted some red Golden Fluid Acrylic paint with water (about 50:50) and painted it on to the bubble wrap with a sponge brush.

Then I placed the bubble wrap face down on to the envelope and rolled a soft brayer across it.

This is the result:

Here is some large bubble wrap being printed:

I then painted the same piece of bubble wrap with blue paint and printed that on top:

This is the pizza base from the above photo. I scored a grid pattern into it with the tip of an old pen, or you can use the end of a paintbrush or a similar object.

I painted the pizza base with blue and red paint and printed it:

You can use the pizza base to draw any design you wish. Here I am making a flower design with the end of a paint brush.

This is the result:

I painted this with green paint:

And printed it by pressing it down and, again, rolling it with a brayer. (This helps to transfer the paint to the paper).

Here I printed a great grid pattern using something I found in my husband’s DIY workroom! I’m not sure what it is meant to be used for, but it makes a great pattern!

And this is the moulded plastic which I have painted with red paint:

Great design, huh?

Here I added a bit of yellow paint to the red and painted it on in stripes (you’ll see the yellow has already mixed to make orange) and then overprinted it with the green pizza base leaf shape.

And these are the results!

When these are dry you can cut them up to make tags or use them in any way that you would use wrapping paper or commercially printed decorative paper.

There you go – I hope that has given you just a few ideas for printing patterns on paper. There are loads of other possibilities and I’m sure you will come up with tons of imaginative ones.