screenprint

Hello, etsy store!

| ehpyle

two tea towels bottle branch blog

Maybe I left you hanging in my last post. I showed you a silkscreen tea towel I made this summer, but I didn’t tell you what I’m going to do with it. Well, guess what?!  I finally got around to opening an Etsy store. I’ve stocked it with these seaweed towels and some new tea towels printed with an old silkscreen of wild grasses. I’ve also added a couple handprinted children’s T-shirts I made a few years ago – extras from a project I did for my children. (I even had to bribe my children to get them to model the shirts for me — photos on etsy, but not of the bribing, just the shirts.)

viking and cowboy t shirts

I hope you will go take a visit. Maybe even ‘like’ some items, ‘like’ my store, and share anything that seems exciting or interesting. I can’t promise it’s going to be a thriving hub of commerce, since my output is quite erratic. But I’m excited to have taken the step, and hope to add new and different printed items, now and again.

Seaweed inspired printing project

| ehpyle

detail seaweed towel bottle branch

I’ve mentioned that last summer I was enthralled with seaweed. I collected seaweed on the Maine coast, and I fell in love with its alien shape, texture, color scheme. I like to imagine it waving and billowing under the sea. So of course, I posted seaweed photos on instagram, and made an animation of seaweed movement. (Please do click on the link to see the animation in instagram – I was trying embed it here but couldn’t make it work!)

I also used seaweed as inspiration for a silkscreen.

seaweed towel spread flat bottle branch

I used water soluble screen printing inks and a flexible film screen and printed on a linen tea towel, as I’ve done in a few previous projects. I printed up a batch and then let them rest until last week, when I decided to pull them out and iron them. I’m toying with the idea of printing them in a pale blue-grey next time around, but first I need to finish organizing and cleaning out my work area, clean up my garden, and so on. So, who knows? It might be summer before I revisit this project again.

seaweed towel with books etc bottle branch

Printing Project: Soap Bubbles

| ehpyle

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I was thinking about bubbles a lot this past summer. In addition to blowing colored bubbles with my kids, I also made a bubble inspired silkscreen.

EZ print bubblesFor the first time, I used an EZ print screen. It certainly was quicker, lighter, and easier to manouever than the wood framed screens I’ve tried in the past, though I think I managed to scrub mine too hard in between printings and destroyed the screen. Somehow it seems fitting that a screen of something so ephemeral as soap bubbles should be short lived itself.

printed bubble towel

Once again, I printed on small hand/ kitchen towels, though I used cotton, rather than linen this time. I felt like soap bubbles print needed to be printed on something more utilitarian, something that could be used in a kitchen.

soap bubble tea towel

I wrapped a few up for my little sister for her birthday. The rest are wrapped up to be presented as a hostess gift this weekend, and so as I really, finally say good bye to summer, I say good bye to the last remnants of this bubbly summer project.

wrapped soap bubble towels

A summer screenprint and a giveaway!

| ehpyle

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Last summer, when my children were squared away in day camp for a few weeks, I decided to teach myself some printing techniques.  I had been admiring beautiful hand-printed tea towels on etsy and felt a persistent itch to try it myself.

I tried out a few different techniques and one of my successful projects was this wild oats print, made by screen print.

To teach myself, I watched what felt like a thousand youtube video tutorials. I wish I could point to one particularly helpful tutorial, but none stood out, though several were helpful. In the end, the clear, step-by-step instructions in the book Print Liberation helped the most.  Plus, the book is edgy enough that it made me feel just a tiny bit hip.

After creating my screen using a photo emulsion technique, I printed on newsprint, I printed on scraps of old sheets and finally, I printed on linen tea towels I had ordered online. None of my prints were perfect but most were satisfying to create.

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I printed these wild oats in perky spring green and some in a beautiful fall golden yellow, which some how escaped my camera. I washed, dried, ironed, folded and packed them away to be presents.

Now that Christmas is over, I have officially given them all away… except for one, which I now offer to send to a randomly drawn winner. To enter to win this 100% linen, hand printed tea towel, please leave a comment below. I’ll pick a winner next Friday, January 17th. On the off chance that I don’t actually know you in person or Facebook, please make sure you include your email address in the comment form so I can contact you. (It won’t appear online.) I’m pretty sure the competition will be sparse so give it a try! I can tell you from experience it’s a thrill to win a blog giveaway, no matter what the stakes. (Thanks, Kate at book nook!)

I’ll be posting a few more of my summer printing projects soon, though I can’t promise any more giveaways. In the meantime, my wild oats screen rests in the basement, waiting patiently until next summer.

P.S. I had to include this last photo too. In addition to printing, I was experimenting with staging photos a lot last summer. Those were peonies from my garden. I can hardly belive how dreamy they look! I can hardly wait to get back in the garden!

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