Christmas Card Fail

[tdjohnsn]

So, I have been trying to learn to screen print. It has been a festival of fail so far. Just as an example, the recommended exposure time for the emulsion I bought (you coat the screen with emulsion and then expose a positive of your artwork on it to create a stencil to print through) is 45 seconds. The exposure time with my set-up turned out to be 14 minutes. This was discovered through two weeks of trial and error. I would have given up if Ron hadn't been building me a vacuum press for printing. Then, we get the press all set up, and the hinge clamps (they hold the screen to the table so you can lift it up and get your print out and put a new piece of paper in without changing the position of the screen) sit at different levels. They were just manufactured wrong. Which is the other thing I have discovered about screen printing. There are crappy hobby supplies, and there is professional equipment. There is nothing in-between for making the transition from one state to the other. A new squeegee will be purchased on Monday and the one from Speedball will be hung in effigy at the front door as a warning to all other pieces of equipment.

We made soap for gifts this year. I have been printing the labels. The quality of the printing is pretty meh when it isn't pretty bad. I think I know what is wrong, but there are so many moving targets that I am not sure. They are colorful at any rate.

So, I am finally printing our Christmas cards. If you normally get one from us, it will be arriving late and with no promise of quality.

But, it really will contain holiday greetings.

Comments

[kung-fu-monkey.livejournal.com]

Beemer and I are working on origami gifts to send out to our friends, and they, too, shall be late. Our problem is that it's hard to make, say, origami ladybugs on a blade of grass not look like a child's craft project. Sigh.