Screen printing insanity!

This screenprinting thing is a total blast!

This is some of what I did last week:

There will be table runners, placemats, pillows, and maybe a bag or two out of these. The ones with the raspberry colored blobs in the middle are extra special! I'm such a mess. I think I horrified the other students. My hands were always covered in ink. And the blurry looking one on natural linen was a total accident, I moved the screen while printing, but everyone seems to like it the best. Go figure. I'm also having difficulties deciding whether I'm a right-handed screen printer or a left-handed one.

One of the other students was saying kind words about my design and asked me what program I drew it in. When I told her "Power Point" she totally burst out laughing. She said "I was thinking you were going to say Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop or something, not Power Point!" She had no idea you could draw like that in Power Point. I explained to her that I'm pretty darn good at Power Point and can create quite a bit in it. She was really amused.

There are more down at the school that weren't dry when I left last Weds night. They are a gorgeous lavender. Some are on natural colored linen and some are on brown linen. Holy cow! It just hit me, Lavender Brown! She's the Ron's first "love" interest in Harry Potter. How funny is that?

I'm trying to decide on what class to take next. I'll have to talk to the teacher Weds night and see what she suggests as the next step.

Big Disappointment

If you haven't already guessed by the title of my blog, I love the Harry Potter books, therefore the hubby and I went to see the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie Friday night. As Jennie's sister told her, basically the characters are the same, but that's about it. The hubby's comment was that there really wasn't much to the movie, to which my reply was "that's because they left out everything that was important in the book!" (He hasn't read any of the books, so he has no clue).

I just don't understand why they make up things to put in the movie that never happened in the books when they leave out information that is critical to the conclusion. They only went into two of the memories that Dumbledore collected, didn't go over the horcruxes he needed to find, and left out crucial info about Dumbledore's death, not to mention a ton of other things that are really, really important. I just don't know how the producer's and directors can screw up such well read and beloved books. It's a travesty. Really.
There were some cute parts of the movie. On Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me! they described it as "more like Lord of the Rings with hormones", which I thought was pretty funny and accurate. The way the students all interacted, as well, such teenagers, really brought back high school memories. Ah, the drama of being 16! The acting of all of the 'kids' in the movie continues to improve with each movie. Jim Broadbent was great as Slughorn, although not fat enough. Two standouts were Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy and Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. They both did a great job with their characters.

Overall, I would recommend that if you love the books, don't bother spending your money on going to the movie and wait until it comes out on dvd.

I could really get into this!

That's what I told the hubby last week after my first screen printing on fabric class.

I explained to him that I could really get into this screen printing thing, so I'll need to take over the rest of the basement for my "studio". He just snorted and went to seek refuge in his computer room.

I'm taking a four week beginners screen printing on fabric class with my friend Emily at the Lillstreet Art Center. It was technically my birthday present from the hubby, and I think he may be regretting it.

Here's my first ever screen print. I'm calling it "Bubble Tree" since that's what Santiago called it and I think it's fitting.

I was petrified because in the first class the instructor had us cut out images w/contact paper and just slap them on the screen. Just like that, come up with an image now, and print it! I totally can not draw. Stick figures are my forte. I am able to cut out circles and a vague tree shape though, so that's what I went with.

Here are the screen prints that Emily and I made on the clothes line drying. She did the cute jellyfish. I think they look like Atari jellyfish, don't you?

This is the oiled image that I drew in PowerPoint. I love PowerPoint! The image has to be oiled if it's on paper so that the non printed part becomes translucent. The emulsion used to make the screen is some kind of photosensitive goo that burns away the image part, so anything you want to use as the image has to be solid, and everything else light has to be able to go through to harden the emulsion.

It was kind of fun being in a darkroom again (if not ridiculously hot). It brought me back to those blissful times spent in the photography dark room in high school. I was surprised that they used a bug light in the room. I remember the dark rooms as being all dark w/a red light on and that was it. I must say, it's much easier working in a dark room that has light.
And this is my first ever real screen that I made this week. It took almost the whole class time to make the screens so next week I get to print! How exciting is that?

Well, I'm off to make another bag that's due by the end of the month.