new screenprinting project

Printing wrapping paper!

I’m starting a new project… hand-printed wrapping paper! The first screen is coated and drying in the darkroom, I’m waiting for it to dry so I can shoot my first design. My whole darkroom/studio setup is still so new, I’m nervous about whether it’ll work on the first try, here’s hoping it does! Soon I’ll have images of my new project to share… Hoping to finish a bunch of wrapping paper (hopefully at least three designs!) in time to sell at the Chicago Renegade Craft Fair in September!!

renegade craft fair

June 5th and 6th we headed to Brooklyn to set up the Morris & Essex booth at the Renegade Craft Fair – it was a great time and a big success!! Thanks a million to everyone who stopped by and visited, bought stuff or said hello, and ESPECIALLY to EP and Caroline who hosted us and all our stuff at their beautiful apartment AND put in tons of work helping us set up the booth and sell things and bringing us snacks and generally making us happy! (and a special thanks also to Leslie who stopped by to feed us freshly-baked strawberry rhubarb pies, just at the very moment when I was about to die of hunger!)

Morris & Essex booth -photo by Lisa! thank you!

this post is a work in progress, more details to come, about our trip and the fair…

studio

I have been working like mad on the new house! So much to do, and the summer is flying by already…

studio room: before

We picked a big room upstairs from the kitchen to be my studio. It’s got six beautiful windows and lots of open space. On the negative side, the floor is in bad shape, it’s got damaged old wood planks with a few big gaps where you can see through to the kitchen below, all covered over by vinyl flooring which is peeling and curling and torn away in a few spots, then covered in some places with a second layer of peeling and curling vinyl, it’s hideous. And the walls are covered with seventies-style fake wood paneling which someone partially painted forest green and then gave up and just punched a few holes through the wall instead of finishing the paint job. They even painted over a few random sections of the cruddy brown trim with what looks like black nail polish.

ugh.

I don’t need my studio to be very fancy at all, it’s just a place for making messes anyway, and we’re supposed to be focusing our renovation efforts on the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, so the studio is like the last priority for real renovations. But the ugly splotches of green paint were going to drive me crazy, so I decided to do a quick and dirty paint job just to give the place a little bit fresher look.

first order of business: cover up those crazy patches of green paint. I can’t possibly concentrate on work if I have to look at that crazy paint job all day.

I even primed everything and then painted it all some historic shade of greenish-blue. (I will admit that I have a strong urge to paint EVERYTHING in the whole house greenish-blue or bluish-green or robins-egg blue or dusty aqua or anything along those lines. I am going to have to use a lot of self control to avoid making the whole house look like a swimming pool.) Anyway, I haven’t totally finished painting but it’s looking a lot better already. I was in a rush to get working so I could print up a bunch of t-shirts and new cards for the Renegade Craft Fair, so I had to start filling up the studio and working in it even before the painting was done. I swear I am going to finish the paint job soon!

it’s not all painted yet, but at least one entire wall is done…

silkscreen printing table

silkscreen set up! My first screen made using my new light table!

I found some small shelves for free on craigslist, and got some more cheap sturdy shelves at a big box store (ugh). Shelving is the one thing I can never find used at the salvation army or on craigslist. My parents gave me a beautiful, incredibly heavy, big long work table (I think maybe an old army mess table?) which they’d in their basement for eons. The table-top is too rough to print on directly, so I made a portable printing station with a smooth, flat slab of wood and silkscreening hinges. I covered the wood with a layer of clear acetate so it’ll be easier to keep the surface clean. For drawing at my worktable, I found a super comfy giant office chair by the side of the road in Limington. For drying printed t-shirts, I strung a clothesline across the back of the studio and tied little loops for hanging clothes hangers at regular intervals. For drying printed cards, I found a beautiful folding drying rack by the side of the street in White Rock, what luck! (I have a sharp eye for free stuff, right?) The biggest studio project was the light box which I need for exposing photo-sensitive emulsion to create my silkscreen stencils. It’s just two long fluorescent shop-light fixtures inside of a big box, on legs, with a thick sturdy glass tabletop. I built one a few years ago when I was setting up my first studio in New York, and it took me a few days in the workshop with my dad’s help. But this time I whipped it up in just one day, in my dad’s workshop, with just a little help from Mike to screw in the light fixtures that evening. And it works!

building my new light table (in Richard’s workshop) … and the finished product!

At the moment I’m using the icky, windowless downstairs bathroom as my darkroom though I would like to eventually build a little darkroom in the closet attached to my studio, I just need to do some major clean-up in there, and hang a door. And I’m using the garden hose for all my washing-up needs, but one day soon we will get running water and plumbing in the studio! I found a utility sink in the back yard at limington (perfect!), and my parents have been trying to get us to take this old claw-foot tub that’s been sitting in their back yard in Gorham for thirty or forty years at least. I think the tub and sink will go side-by-side on the back wall of the studio, by the chimney. I can use the sink for cleaning up small stuff like paintbrushes, and the tub will be excellent for washing out big screens. And gorgeous too. I am going to have such a great wash-up station! The studio’s definitely not finished but it is really exciting to have ONE room in the house that is actually functional. I spent a lot of hours in there during the past few weeks, working late into the night. It’s a great space already.

busy designing

I’ve had no time to post anything because I’m so busy working! My online Typography classes at the Academy of Art have just finished and I’m reviewing final portfolios (they all arrived in the mail this week!) and finishing up paperwork, submitting final grades. I’ve got some more freelance work (t-shirt graphics for OshKosh), and the biggest project of all, I’m working on new Morris & Essex products for the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, which is just one week away!

I’m developing new t-shirt and greeting card designs, so I’ve been working on new design ideas, selecting a few classic favorites to bring back, researching and ordering t-shirts, and building my new screenprinting studio so I can start working! I built a nice big wooden light table for exposing my screens, I built a new printing station with screen hinges, I found a great big old mess table in my parents’ basement to use for a printing table, bought screens and screen-making materials and emulsion, inks, squeegees, etc. I used to have all of these things in my studio in Brooklyn but when I moved to Argentina I had to sell them all so I’m starting over again from scratch, sigh. Cleaned out the studio space at the new house and started priming and painting the walls, set up shelving to store all my supplies, unpacked boxes of art supplies, set up a drying area to hang wet shirts, got the whole studio set up and I’m printing now! I’m having a bit of trouble with the photographic process, namely my “darkroom” (a windowless bathroom) doesn’t seem to be dark enough and sometimes causes me problems, hopefully I’ll figure out how to make that work a little better this weekend. I’ve printed a few of my designs already and I’ve got a bunch more to go!

And I’ve got new card designs too… two brand-new designs, letterpress printed. So I’ve ordered the paper and custom-mixed ink colors, had type-high metal plates engraved from my designs, and I’ve been driving out to Scarborough to work with my letterpress printer, Mark at Dunstan Press, each day, basically standing by the press with him and making sure each stage of the printing process is going well, colors are correct and registration is perfect, etc. It’s really fun to see it all happen! I’ve ordered envelopes and little clear boxes and sleeves for packaging the finished product. I’m hoping I’ll have time to do some screenprinted card designs too, we’ll see how next week goes. It’s going to be a crazy week.

Back to work! Photos and more details to come, probably not until after the fair is over!

old wallpaper

we’ve been absolutely totally busy working on the new house all the time! Lots of details and stories over here: http://www.limingtonfarmhouse.org/blog/ among other delights, It’s been great discovering layered bits of old wallpaper around the house.

peeling back the layers of wallpaper on the old chimney in the kitchen

a tiny snippet of wallpaper in the attic

the old chimney in the kitchen was covered with wallboard; behind that we found many layers of wallpaper and horsehair plaster over the bricks!

old wallpaper in an upstairs closet

in an upstairs bedroom

more wallpaper from the kitchen

layers of wallpaper in an upstairs closet

We got a tour of our neighbor Mike’s place, also a historical house undergoing renovation. He had some great old wallpaper too!

at our neighbor Mike’s house

at Mike’s house

bright viney pattern

making up new pattern design stuff for my portfolio!

close up

NYPL digital gallery

neat post with these beautiful images on DesignSponge today! (Sara S. used to work for the public library, helping to put this archive online!)

blue stripes

Harvey Faircloth capelet.

I should be doing work but I’ve been wandering around the internet instead, and I found this nice little cape which I can’t afford to buy, but just looking at it put me in a better mood and now that I’m in a better mood I can get back to work again.

our custom tiles!

Custom tiles back from the tile factory!

SO EXCITING! these are really heavy… we are shipping them to Maine via boat – I hope we don’t go over our weight limit! The colors aren’t exactly as we wanted, the orange came out as a very pale pinkish color where we’d asked for a more intense pumpkin-orange color… so they look a bit more dusty and washed-out than we had pictured them, but… whatever. I’m sure they’ll look amazing when they’re installed on the floor! Hooray!!

Penguin Classics inspiration

I’m a lifelong pattern lover and wrapping-paper collector, and I’ve been amassing snapshots of tile patterns over the years; lately I realized I’ve also been getting inspired by the images and patterns from Penguin Classics and Penguin Scores that I keep seeing all over the internet. Today I’m brainstorming some ideas for new card designs and I started collecting jpegs of Penguin cover patterns from around the internet… in the interest of documenting my inspiration I thought I’d collect some favorites here. If I manage to turn this into a great card design or pattern idea, of course I will post that here too!

Penguin Scores Brandenburg Concertos from For the Love of…

Penguin Scores Brandenburg Concertos from Zoo in the Head

Penguin Scores Coriolan and Egmont design by Jan Tschichold from St. Bride Foundation

Penguin Scores design from Ace Jet 170

Penguin Scores design from Ace Jet 170

The King Penguin Series from underdesign

Penguin spines from bandelle.com

Penguin spines from ffffound.com

Penguin Scores pattern from An Aesthete’s Lament

Penguin Scores pattern from An Aesthete’s Lament

pattern from Prjct.com

pattern from flickr

Penguin spines designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, image from bandelle.com

Penguin spines designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, image from design*sponge

Penguin Classics designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, image from design*sponge