I have been thinking for a while now how I could promote my business, and one idea I had was to screen print cards with the rendering of my art barn. I have written a lot of blog posts over the years about Thermofax screen printing on fabric, but I have historically had minimal success on paper; I often end up with blurred imagery.  However, I was really glad I was able to watch Lynn Krawczyk’s brand new DVD,  Thermofax Screen Printing Essentials because she had some fantastic tips for screening on all types of substrates:

It’s easy to see why Lynn was asked to create a DVD on Thermofax screen printing. Just check out all of these luscious fabrics of hers (currently in my possession…I am hesitant to send any of them back because I can’t stop petting them)!

After watching her DVD, I thought about giving it a go to create greeting cards.  I first created a photocopy of the image in Photoshop that I then burned onto a screen.

And for the first time, per the DVD,  I used Jacquard’s Puff Additive, and mixed with Golden Fluid acrylics. The Puff Additive has just enough tooth to it to yield a very sharp image on paper, whether you later want to apply a heat gun to emboss it, or not.

I experimented with different colors, different amounts of pressure when pulling the paint down the screen to get a more organic result.

And now I have my first set of cards to send out to the greater world.

Lynn has a lot of wonderful tips in her DVD and she masterfully and easily explains the processes from start to finish. In celebration of her DVD launch, she is giving away two screens of choice to a randomly selected reader of this blog entry. A question I have is, if you could create a screen of an image, what subject matter or image would you choose?  Just leave a comment below and you’ll be in the running!

To check out other ideas for screen printing and surface design, have a look at these bloggers also participating in this blog hop:

Maddie Kertay

Lisa Chin

Briana Goetzen

Dawn DeVries Sokol

Pam Carriker (goes up tomorrow)

Lynn Krawczyk (Sunday)

I had a very industrious weekend. Saturday was filled with sunshine and photographic possibilities whereas Sunday was steeped in rain, which meant for a lot of indoor creative endeavors.

My weekend in pictures:

My night water lily. It is a little groggy to close in the morning, so I can usually catch it still in full bloom at 6:00 AM.

A hibiscus blossom greeting me first thing in the morning.

Plumeria! This flower is so fragrant, not to mention velvet to the touch.

A water lily, just waking up and spreading her petals to embrace the day. I thought this might make for a nice Thermofax screen, so I imported the image into my computer.

I used the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop to focus on the central flower shape.

I then dragged the flower to a white background.

Using the photocopy tool in the filter menu, I turned the full-color image to a black and white rendition.

Then I opened a new file in Photoshop and dragged three of these flowers to create a row. Later, I copied this row a couple of times so I had a sheet of three rows of waterlilies.

I then printed the sheet of waterlilies on my inkjet printer, placed a piece of screening material on top, and ran them through the carrier of my Thermofax machine. The bulb in my Thermofax machine heated up both sheets, and where the black carbon ink appears on the sheet of paper, it melted the screening material, creating the graphic impression on the screen.

I usually run the print and the screening material at least three passes through my Thermofax machine to make sure the image took on the screening material.

I chose pink paint to screen the images onto a rich lime green background. I created about 1/4 yard of fabric with this image, and screened with a variety of colors.

I had an idea to incorporate this piece to create a stitched cover for a recycled aluminum can to hold my watercolor pencils.

And here it is: my new watercolor pencil holder. I guess I should make greater strides to keep a sketchbook now!

When I was done, I experimented in the kitchen and made  spinach and parmesan dumplings in a ginger broth:

I enjoyed a nice couple of quiet days. Did you stitch or quilt this past weekend?