Dreaming Spirals

I just finished a Gocco printing session and have put photos up on Facebook (in case it gets too boring here on the blog!!). They’re on my Facebook profile and I’ll put them on my Facebook shop page as well which is open to general viewing.

Last year I traced part of a medieval woodcut print of a cityscape using one of the Dover books, and made it into a Gocco screen.  I’m not sure that the screen I made was very successful because I didn’t shade it enough to give it dimension and the resultant prints just weren’t very clear.   I printed several Moleskine journals with it and put them in my Etsy shop.  Here is one so you can see what I mean:

Actually this one is even more unclear because I used white ink and gold embossing powder!   But I did do some with white ink on black which wasn’t much better.

Anyway, they’re not like that anymore!  This afternoon I got the watercolour paints out and highlighted a few of the features, I hope more successfully:

Here’s a close up of that last picture:

I also tried a different sort of highlighting on the black one:

I did this one with a silver pen.

I stamped this one with my angel stamp as I think she looks pretty medieval too!   

These are all for sale in my shop on Etsy, by the way.  What do you think? Does my colouring improve them or spoil them?

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 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.

Well, the patio is looking a bit better stocked now;   I just hope these French beans will look as healthy after the slugs sniff them out!

And here are the tomatoes all bedded in!   The big ones are Alicante, the smaller ones Gardener’s Delight.

Just to end this little horticultural interlude, the wisteria at the front of our house is in full bloom; it smells heavenly.

And to get back to textile content, DH and I went and got a HUGE piece of MDF for my printing table the other day – here it is in my studio.  So now I won’t have to keep pinning and unpinning fabric and moving it along to do the next bit…

Here’s a sneak peek at my reeds hanging no.1.  The stuff on the table above is being auditioned for hanging no. 2.

In December, Jane Dunnewold of Art Cloth Studios issued a challenge to 12 brave and adventurous art cloth makers. This was the brief, in Jane’s words:

In December of 2007, I issued an invitation to surface designers through the Complex Cloth Internet list. Anyone who was interested in working on a dyed two yard length of silk habotai was to write to me and indicate interest. I put all the names in a hat, and drew out twelve participants’ names. I wanted it to be a democratic event.

I spent a happy evening reading the wonderful blog The Art Cloth Challenge. Go and have a look – it’s really worth it! And amazing to see what different cloth resulted from 12 people’s vision of the same piece of cloth and to read their journals about how they altered it.