Thursday 31 May 2012

Printing my bags ..

 I had to measure my bags and the screen to find the centre and line them up. I started by printing black.

Here is my first sample, I thought the ink came through a little heavy, to combat this I found that if the paint was mixed equally with printing medium and quickly skimmed across the screen the image came out clearer.

 Two of my bags printed in black.

 Green samples. I chose an emerald earthy green to tie in with my poster and the folky theme.

 Blue samples, this was to tie in with the festival poster.
 Brown Prints, this was to continue the earthy theme.
I randomly plodged on brown and green paint, this gave an interesting merge of the woody theme. I am very happy with the 18 bags I have successfully printed and the feedback i have recieved has been very positive.

Bunting Samples

 I had to experiment with tension and needle size to determine how I wanted my knitted flags to look.

 For the doile flags, I PVA'ed the cut edge so it would not fray or snag threads.

Here is a sewn sample of the flags I plan to include. I want to keep the colour scheme minimal and focus on the texture and methods used. The first is a hemmed calico flag, with lino cut printing on to it. There is also the doile and knitted flags. I do however intend to increase the size.
This is a sample of the typographic flags i plan to use, at first I used just a piece of material but this looked unexciting and too 2D so I wadded up my second attempt which made it look better. My lettering will have serifs and I plan to use calico.

Moving in the furniture ...

Pinned Image
Pinned Image
Pinned Image
Here are some ideas from Pinterest of the modern idea of vintage distressed upcycling, I think this fits in perfectly with my theme of folk art and craft, the idea of never throwing anything out and always reusing and handing down.

In storage, we found a lovely vintage bookcase, although the design is simple, it is functional and will fit in with my project perfectly.
I used a power sander to strip back the varnish and then I will white wash it, giving a distressed look which is very current at the moment.