Screenprinting a Primer-Part 1

Today is day one of my crash course in traditional screen printing! This series of post is for all the brides/crafters out there that have ever considered investing in a Gocco or YUDU but could never justify the cost. Traditional screen printing may seem intimidating but with a few tools you’ll be able to produce prints similar to if not better in quality to those produced on a Gocco or YUDU system. Oh and the cost is about a 3^rd of that associated with a YUDU!

For starters please don’t be intimidated by the list of tools below. All of the tools listed can be purchased online or through your local art or screen print supply shop and none with the exception of the laser printer are over 25 bucks.

The Tools-

· Hinge Clamps

· Aluminum or wood screen burned with your image

· Squeegee large enough to fully cover your art work

· Water based ink

· Tape

· Pallet adhesive/ temporary spray adhesive

· Ink Fixer (for textiles)

· Scissors*

· Transparencies/ velum*

· Opaque black marker*

· Laser Printer/Copier

· Paint stir stick*

· Voided gift card (random I know I’ll explain!)*

*not pictured

The first step in creating your art work you can either choose to hand draw your art work onto your transparencies/velum using an opaque black marker deco paint pens work best or printing it directly onto your velum or transparencies using a laser printer. It’s really important that you print your art work using a laser printer and not an Ink Jet printer. Inkjets do not produce the opacity need in your art work to achieve a clean burn. Our art work pictured below is printed on a tabloid sized velum paper, personally I prefer to use velum at about 50 cents a sheet its more economical that transparencies and is available in tabloid size for larger prints.

With your art work is ready it’s time to head down to your local art or screen supply store to buy your screen and have it burned. If you’re in the LA area I strongly recommend you check out Screen Depot on Main Street in downtown they caterer to the industry but have great prices and their screens are always perfectly burned. The cost of burning your screen generally depends on the amount of art pieces being burned on one screen and the size of your screen and can range from 10-15 bucks depending on the shop you go to. This may seem like a steep price to pay for 1 screen but remember when compared to gocco and YUDU screens that have a high margin of error it’s a pretty small price to pay for a perfectly burned screen.

When picking out a screen the 2 most important things to consider are screen size and mesh count. Mesh count is just a fancy way to refer to how many strings per inch are present on your screen mesh the higher the count the less ink is allowed to pass through your screen and the finer the detail you can achieve in your prints. Your screen size is dependent on the size of art work you plan to work with you want to make sure that any screen you purchase has at least 1 inch of space of clearance on all 4 sides of your art work. Typically we stick to a 17x21 125 mesh screen it’s a nice in between mesh count that allows for fine work but allows me to use thicker more opaque ink, a screen this size will typically cost about 18 bucks and can be reused many many times.

Next up is setting up your print station, for this you will need a pair of Hinge Clamps. Hinge clamps are the piece of equipment that allows you to raise and lower your screen without losing registration on your print and cost anywhere from 20-25 bucks. Now it is possible to pull a print without the use of hinge clamps but the process can get messy and has a higher margin of error so it’s advisable that you invest in some clamps. Your clamps will need to attached to a work bench or table if your unwilling to permanently screw in your clamps to a solid piece of furniture you can also use a large piece of plywood of MDF as long as its stable and roughly the same size as the screen you plan to use.

With your screen burned and your clamps installed you’re ready to start printing! Tomorrow I’ll go over how to prep your screen for printing, what inks to use and the proper way to use a squeegee!

Keeping it Consistent

One of my biggest goals for our wedding décor and paper products is that it all coordinates and creates a consistent feel throughout the day. One way to do this is by limiting the amount of fonts we use and repeating the same design motif throughout our paper product and decor.

For our fonts J and I wanted something that would echo the mid-century modern aesthetic that we are hoping to infuse into our day with a dash of playfulness ala Jonathan Adler and Todd Oldham. After pouring over hundreds of fonts on Veer and Dafont we finally settled on the following-

Cocktail Shaker via Veer.com

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Festiva via Veer.com

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I was a little concerned that the fonts wouldn't place nice with each other and would look horrible when combined but after playing around with them in illustrator all my fears have been put aside and I'm really happy with our decision.

As for the design motif I originally was inspired by a vintage TV tray that we picked up about a year ago at a flea market. You can kinda see it in this picture peeking out from under my pom pom maker.

After some work in Photoshop I was able to come up with my own version of my inspiration patter.

I love the retro vibe of the geometric design and the pattern is simple enough that it won’t over power any of the other design placed next to it.

So what do you think? Are you feeling the mid-century retro vibe from our fonts and pattern?

If the Shoe Fits

I’m a big believer that all good outfits start from the ground up, and by ground I mean the shoes. Some of my favorite outfits have started off with the perfect pair of footwear so it goes without saying that on one of the biggest fashion days of my life (our wedding) I would abide by my tried and true policy.

My search for the perfect wedding shoes began and ended with this Zooey Deschanel for Cotton ad-

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This ad is perfection in my eyes, besides the fact that I big puffy heart love Zooey Deschanel the whole aqua, gray vintage bike combo is just to die for and those shoes can we please talk about those shoes! Yummy aqua pep toe heels with a big floppy bow, it was love at first sight and I was smitten. My love for the yummy aqua pep toe pumps with a floppy bow went unrequited for some time and every time I came across the ad in one of my magazines I would oh and ah over my precious shoes but nothing ever came of it.

I was convinced that since the shoes had been featured in a national ad campaign featuring a A list celebrity that my dream shoes would be way out of my price range and I didn’t feel like having my bubble burst. That is until one day after receiving a paycheck heavy with 20 plus hours of overtime, I had money in my pocket I was feeling the itch to drop some cash and these shoes became my man target.

One Google searches later and I had found out that my shoes were designed Vivienne Westwood for Melissa and were available for purchase at a fairly reasonable price from my favorite shoe dealer zappos.com­­­­­. A couple mouse clicks and a lighter wallet later these pretty were on their way to our home, Zappos must have sensed my longing for new shoes because the upgraded my shipping to priority next day air and bringing these pretties to my hot little hands in less than 24 hours.

I’ve had my shoes for a little less than a year now and I’ve had no buyer’s remorse. The shoes are everything I had hoped for in a wedding shoe. Uber comfy with a sensible heal (perfect since J and I are the same height) and even though they are made out of Jelly like material the plastic material photographs more like a patent leather and doesn’t pinch.

Did you buy a portion of your wedding day look before you purchased your dress if so did you have any buyer remorse?

*Oh and no I haven’t purchased a dress yet but don’t worry I have something up my sleeve that will make finding the perfect dress easy peasy! *

Cotton ad image courtesy of zooey-fan.com

The New

Happy (belated) New Years! This year is what I like to think of as a landmark year for me and the misters, not only are we planning the biggest baddest party of our lives otherwise known as our wedding we are entering our 10^th year as a couple. Looking back over the past 9 years of our lives together I can’t help feeling nostalgic for the couple we once were and excited for the couple we are becoming and the life we are building together.

We’ve grown up together and as you all know growing up is never easy. Mister Cotton Candy and I originally became engaged in the summer of 2007. I was fresh out of college and 6 months into my first “real” job, after 7 years of dating getting engaged seemed like the logical next step. The wedding date was set for April of 2009 wedding planning was in full swing and life was good. Fast forward to the summer of 2008 and everything we had built as a couple began to crumble.

We were living together in his tiny 1 bedroom apartment and I was working a thank less job for little pay with a 2 hour plus commute both ways. Things became tense in our little world and I became resentful of the ties that I felt our relationship had on me. Slowly the person and the relationship I had turned to for comfort and support was begging to feel stifling and oppressive. I began to dread the future I saw ahead of us, I felt like I was losing control of my life and my future and everything inside of me screamed to get out.

Things finally came to a head for us one evening in October. I arrived home late after working overtime at my job to find mister Cotton Candy sitting alone in the dark he said we need to talk, he knew I had been unhappy for some time in our relationship and that it might be best if we called the wedding off and went our separate way. I will forever be grateful to him for having the courage to end our relationship at a time when I didn’t. I shudder to think of what our lives would be like now if we went through with the wedding and never addressed the issues that were crippling our relationship at the time.

In the weeks that followed our break up I moved out of our apartment and into my own place, gave notice at my job and although my heart was heavy I felt a great sense of freedom and relief. We maintained a strong friendship during our time apart as a couple. I had always believed that our friendship was the strongest part of our relationship while we were together and I was proven right during our many months apart.

Much to the confusion of our friends and family we continued to spend weekend together as friends enjoying all the things we once did before our relationship hit hard times. Without the pressures of our relationship and the impending wedding we were able to begin rebuilding the friendship that had always been at the core of our relationship and over time we began to address a lot of the unspoken issues that eventually lead to our breakup. With the distance that our break up created we were able to take freely about our past issues and we spent many evening pouring our hearts out to each other sharing our fears and pain from the past. We finally began to heal old wounds that had never had a chance to heal.

Time passed and then around the 2^nd anniversary of our engagement we took the step from friendship to more than friends. It was a natural progression for us but we moved with caution keeping our reunion on the down low until the following October. 1 year after our breakup were we both confused our renewed love for each other and our desire to take our new relationship to the next level. Sometime after we began talking about wedding again I began wearing my ring again and we began planning a wedding. In typical Mister and Miss Cotton Candy fashion no big second proposal no big announcement to our friends and family.

Looking back I truly believe that our time apart has not only made us stronger as a couple but reaffirmed our belief that we are with the person that we are truly meant to be with. Not only has the friendship that we shared grown stronger we have been able to come to terms with a lot of emotional muck from the last 10 years. This June I will be marrying my best friend and on that day I will go into our union knowing that our relationship is the strongest that it has ever been something that I wouldn’t be able to do our first time around.

Oh and just because I love the song and because it sums up everything I feel when I look back on the past couple of years-

Did you and your FI spend time apart before your engagement?