Monday 11 June 2012

Poorly Geek Time


Today I am poorly in bed, with two black fluffy kitties for company and a wealth of internet tutorials before me.
Between the sneezes, and the 'lets play with the computer cable' game Daisy keeps attempting, I have worked out how to do this:

Pretty snazzy huh?! And all in photoshop too...genius! 

 In other news I have been getting rather overly excited about the prospect of getting going on my all new (to me) screen printing table!
 
Now I am one very lucky girl in that my charming other half not only puts up with my space-encompassing passion by letting me take over the Outhouse out the back of our house, but that he also buys me the tools to help me achieve printing equilibrium - including this vacuum table :) What a fine fella I've got right?!

 We collected the table from an old University buddy of mine, Chris from We Three Club who along with his lovely Mrs, Alex, design some amazing posters and apparel for too many clients to mention!




 They also run a stupidly fun live poster printing/gig watching experience Poster Roast where you can simultaneously watch the gig posters being screen printed by the artist whilst also watching that band perform, legendary right?!


Well I hope that some of the printing heritage that oozes from this table will help me along in my screen printing adventure, I feel as if I have inherited a warrior! (and I promise to treat her good Chris and Alex!)

One of the great things about this table is that it has a vacuum built into the table - you see all those tiny holes? Well under there is a powerful vacuum that will hold my paper in place when I've finished a pull. Before this I used to just use some screen clamps attached to a bit of board, and the paper would always be stuck to the under side of my screen when I had printed, meaning an extra movement in every print.


The other bonus is that the table has a weight balance on the back, meaning that I can simply lift the screen gently and it will just float in the air above me. Now this isn't something that would be that exciting to most, but when you're doing a run of 200 two colour invites (i.e. 800 prints inside and out) these little bonuses will save my grandma back enormously!


The other new bit of kit that is signaling my beginning of my self-sufficiency is my exposure unit.
Now to 'expose' your screen means to make a stencil for you to print through. 
Very simply put you: 1. Coat your screen in a light sensitive emulsion (the green goop!) 2. Place an acetate of your design on top and 3. Leave under a UV light to harden.

The new exposure unit is proving a trial and error beast to tame, as I'm used to using the hyper-fast expensive machine at the print studio, but I'll get there and will soon be able to print on a daily basis....HEAVEN!


I have been beavering away on new designs this past week and am super stoked to soon be able to be printing them all in the Outhouse. I have so many ideas in my head of things I want to print and now it will be so much easier to achieve them. 

There are also some all new baby plates to treat your new-parent friends with...here a couple of the circus design I made up for an order this week, do get in touch if you'd like one too :)

And finally, a little bit of down time was spent yesterday (before the lurgy really took hold)with a trip to East Carlton Park, near Corby.

The park used to be part of British Steel and Iron, and still has a museum there (and an amazing dolls house shop!) but this magnificent building has now been turned into flats, can you imagine living there, it's like the Addams Family's house!


We took the picnic set I got for Mr Phil for Christmas (a £2.50 bobby bargain from a charity shop!) and he made his signature homemade scotch eggs...yum!

Hope you are all having a nice start to your week and have managed to make it out of bed!

The Little Peach x

1 comment:

  1. Wow your new table looks awesome. So great that you'll be self sufficient. And loving the peek at the hairstyles print - can't wait to see what awesomeness you come up with next. Love you Peach. xx Ps: That flashing sign is ace. x

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