Mama Olifant

Here's the elephant pillow I designed for Mother's Day. I was a wee bit late and only printed it the day before so it wasn't much use to my mom, or any other moms for that matter. Happily, it has been pointed out to me that it can also work quite well as a Baby Shower gift  (which can happen at all times of the year)! 

In short, the back is made up of an elephant stencil I cut out, while the front is screen printed using screen filler. I'm enjoying sewing pillow cases as they look very complete and finished at the end, and in reality it's just a bunch of straight lines! Print, print, zoom, zoom, cut here, cut there, and you're done! Voila!

Just for the fun of it, here are some of my other favorite elephants:

and to pull on the heart strings, here's a scene from Dumbo:

 Now, go call your mom and let her know how much you love her.

I heart Biking

I'm finding myself printing in all manners possible: screen printing, stenciling, printing with linoleum stamps and even potato printing! On top of that my newly acquired skill of sewing makes me sew anything and everything together: pillows, bags, pencil cases, and random pieces of fabric. I added a zipper to this cute little pencil case I created.

The bike design is from a linoleum block I carved out many months ago. I like the detail of the handbrake, the chain and the pedals. The ink worked quite differently on the fabric compared to the previously printed paper cards. Because the ink didn't take evenly in all places, it almost looks like a newsprint or somehow 3D.

When in doubt, put a Vespa on it

I made a pillow! I know, not the biggest accomplishment ever, but I'm a novice in the world of sewing, so I'm excited! The stitches are (more or less) straight, and the pillow fits inside. What more would you want from a pillow case? Oh yeah, a cool image. So, when in doubt, slap a Vespa on it. 

The large front Vespa was done by cutting a stencil from my stash of overhead projector plastic. I didn't want clean lines, so I cut in and around the marker lines, making the final print like a sketch. I opted for doing both sides of the pillow using a stencil. It wasn't for any artistic reason, I just didn't feel like getting all the screen printing paraphernalia out and having to clean the screen afterward. Talk about lazy! 

Well, maybe not lazy, so much as I'm finding myself with a new found attitude of "just do it" (for fear of getting dinged by Nike, I should say "just get it done!"). My "just get it done" attitude means also that I'm opting for good over perfect and it's leaving me with many more items produced and while I avoid  the endless tinkering and over-thinking I just plow ahead and learn along the way.

It's a pretty cool pillow, if I do say so myself!

Canvas Painting Time Lapse

Painting

I find screen printing to be very controlled and with the final outcome to be the result of much thinking, preparation and planning. To shake things up I enjoy painting. So far, my painting extravaganzas have been limited to throwing painting on a canvas. The bigger the better with some of the paintings being 6x3 feet. There's no plan. There's no initial idea. I don't sketch anything and definitely don't aim to create anything visibly recognizable, i.e. a person, a house, a tree. I just choose a color I like. I quite enjoy adding that first dash of color on a blank canvas. It's similar to when you first lift the silk screen after pulling the paint through the stencil. "Aah, look how it has changed, there's a mark now! How fun!" This little initial mark of paint creates an energy or perhaps more accurately, a stepping stone for the next mark. Should the next blob of paint be close or far away? Do they connect or is it all separate? It's like a dance. And soon enough the canvas is full and I have no more paint in the bucket, but plenty on my apron!