Weekend DIY Screen Printing Workshop

Lately I’ve enjoyed printing on textile, so over the weekend we took a trip to the verdant mountainous Fort di Vinadio to learn something more about screen printing.

Switch on Future, based in Bra (headquarters of Slow Food), is a portal which connects artists with artists, events and organizers of events. Over the weekend they showcased west coast style screen printer  Christian Peirano. He did a diy screen printing workshop with handy tips as making your own printing plates by economical means--ingredients included cooking oil! Can’t wait to put these techniques to the test. Check out Christian’s instagram account!

CHRISTIAN EXPLAINING PRODUCTS FOR PAPER OR TEXTILE AND HOW TO MIX COLORS 

Strong Arm Vandercook

All the way from America to western Europe this Vandercook has traveled, and it’s the latest big acquisition for the studio. She (I prefer to use the pronoun SHE as she’s got a strong arm) made it from Holland and was in the possession of a printer who passed on and whose wife decided the press should do the same. Now, she’s with me in Italy.

Letterpress Basics: From Galley to Chase

This is a short but concise series of letterpress basics. The first two posts started with How to Hold Your Composing Stick to Composing with Metal Type on your composing stick and now getting your design From Galley to Chase secured, keyed up and finally Time to Print!

For visuals I’m using my first cards done at a letterpress workshop in Paris with Thomas Gravemaker.  I had in mind vertical and horizontal text and an oversized P. A line gauge (a specific printer’s ruler) helped measure how much distance I actually needed to create “designerly space”. In this example, the distance would be between the vertical and horizontal metal type relative to my sketch.

Letterpress Basics: Composing with Metal Type

This post might be past due but here it is nevertheless! Certainly, I’ve had time to practice composing with metal type, and once I learned the basics and dove in, this process was relatively easier that it first  looked.

At the top you see the composing rules with ears mentioned in Letterpress Basics: Composure On A Stick. It helps compose lines of type built on top of each other. Lines of type are mirror reflecting letters, words or lines of words you compose on your stick. These lines of type will be set backwards (and facing upwards) since the final print will re-reflect itself correctly. 

Letterpress Seed Exchange: DIY Mini Envelopes

I made some mini envelopes for a letterpress seed exchange project I did with gals from mostly Europe. I’ll post more on that project later. Here’s a simple illustrative how-to make your own.

TRANSPARENT MINI ENVELOPES WITH LETTERPRESS STICKER