I am so late in getting my thank-you cards sent to my peeps in Boston; they so kindly put me up, hosted great meals and drove me around Boston. I don’t like procrastinating: I’ve never liked the feeling of having something I have to get done looming over my head when I can avoid that feeling altogether by just….getting the job done.
But….procrastination happens. Even to me.
Of course, these days, no one really writes thank-you notes anymore; unless maybe for a wedding gift, so for me to have this as a looming task on my list of things-to-do says a lot about what a throwback I am. So, perhaps no one would really notice if they never got a note.
The thing is, I had such a nice visit back there; and I have such lovely relatives. So, I do want to acknowledge that. To make up for the delay, I made cards the other day, instead of just buying thank you cards. I used a technique from the fabulous Jane Dunnewold book Improvisational Screen Printing; see her website for info on ordering. I believe the book is out of print; but, a DVD of the book is available. In part, I made cards because it’s been SO LONG since I’ve done any art projects due to the ginormous landscaping project with which I’ve been consumed.
The technique I used from Jane’s book involves drawing a design with watercolor (aka water-soluble or aquarelle crayons) on a silkscreen, and then using acrylic gel medium (readily available at big-box craft stores) to transfer the design onto paper; transfering to fabric is also possible, but the acrylic gel medium is slightly stiff and will alter the hand of the fabric. The crayon drawing breaks down in the process; only a few transfers are possible.
In this photo, you can see a plain 12 x 18 silkscreen in the back; up front, I’ve used masking tape on the same sized silkscreen to mask-out the screen, leaving only greeting-card-sized mesh exposed. I got the pack of blank greeting cards at a big-box craft store, using a half-off coupon:
While watching the Joy Behar Show, I doodled with my water-color crayon collection on my silkscreen; I am a bit of Joy Behar addict, you’d never catch me alive watching the View, but I do think she’s very funny and her night-time show is gossipy fun while I do household or crafty projects.
Now, mind you, these are just simple greeting cards. Nothing complex. Here are the final crayon drawings; and, on the mesh, the crayons seem faint: the design will transfer quite strongly, though. I’ve done this once before, and a hint to anyone who’s going to try this technique: do NOT layer the crayon, thinking perhaps a thicker layer of crayon will delay the inevitable design breakdown, and give you a few more transfers. It won’t work. The thicker layer will just act as a resist, and will print as a blank space. Don’t do it!
Since I was doodling on my dining room table, I was using poster-board to protect my precious formica. Hey. I eat off that surface. With a plate between me and the formica. But, you get the point.
I taped down “guides” on the poster board so I could line up my finished silkscreen on top of the blank greeting cards; this way, everything will line up nicely once I started screen-printing with the gel medium:
Here, I put down the silkscreen on top of the greeting cards; you can see the plastic jar of gel medium (I use Liquitex, with a gloss finish, which looks nice on paper). I poured Liquitex on the masking tape on the top of the silkscreen and used my squeegee to pull the medium down and up once, then removed the prints, put down new blank cards, and did the same thing again until the design was exhausted (5 runs altogether, which made for 10 cards; and of the 10, I’ll use 6).
It takes some practice to figure out your style and figure out how many “runs” you can get of your image. Here is a shot of the strongest and weakest prints; I got a couple images right in the middle of the range shown below, but those prints aren’t in the photo:
I hope all my cousins in Boston will be happy with their cards. It will make up for what I know Emily Post would consider a very tardy response on my part.
I would LOVE to attend Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth Mastery Program. Please check out her website. Her work is inspiring, to say the least. I bought her very first book, Complex Cloth, when it came out in the early 90s and I’ve been a fan ever since.
Very nice!
Yeah, it was great to do even a mini-art project, given all the time I’ve been working outside.
I was happy to see you at the Farmer’s Market today; hopefully we can have our dog park reunion this week, I’ll contact you and Mike and see what we can arrange.