I haven't been able to post in a while as things have been a little kerayzee in the studio. It's been printing crazy to be exact!! Earlier this year I was asked to make a limited edition t-shirt for music makers
Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip, (I'm afraid I can't remember whether I remembered to post about it on here) which seemed to go down really well on their tour and a couple of weeks ago they asked me to design another one based on their track
"A letter from God to Man" (Which you can hear somewhere on
HERE!). So I did, and that is where I have been, designing and printing 300 tees for their mini tour!!
While I was working I took some images of my hand printing process. I don't have any fancy rigs (except for my heat setter which makes the prints washable...it is a godsend!), just my hands and arms and and some squeegees and lots of space! For these tees I printed 2 different 3 colour colourways for guys and girls and they came out really well, with white and a colour and then a dash of bright bright fluorescent too! So here are some of the pictures...
First of all the screens have to be prepared with the light sensitive emulsion and then my drawings are reproduced as a negative which blocks UV light and makes the screen...
Then the tees arrived and stacked up into an enormous 300 tee stack! The little pic next to it has my test print tee...I always do a test print to make sure that the screen is printing well and the colours are good...
Then comes the actual printing! These images show 3 of the colours going down on different coloured t-shirts...Click the pic to see them bigger if you like.
It is quite a long process as with hand printing process and the inks I use, the tees have to be hung to dry between each colour before the next goes on...The studio was swathed in cotton!
Then it was time for a carrot cake break...Mark's lovely mum sent this over to help fuel my printing endeavours. She makes excellent carrot cake indeed.
Then once all of the t-shirts are printed with their colours the heat setting and packaging begins...I didn't take a picture of the heat setting but below is the packaging...rollin' rollin' rollin'!
And finally after all of that and lots of counting and re-counting (thanks Mum! She came over to the studio to help me with the counting and adding...) they were finally packaged and ready for the courier to come and take them away to the first stop of the Dan Le Sac Vs scroobius Pip mini tour!! Phew!
So that is what I was up to last week. I haven't managed to get images of the finished product yet but will post some on here as soon as I have them...
Toot toot for now!
All of the pieces are hand made and have delicate textures or cute motifs. I am especially loving the hammered sterling silver bangles, they are so elegant but have all these little imperfections from the hand made process that make them that little bit different. They can be worn either on their own or stacked. In fact I liked them so much I bought one for myself!!
We also have some new sterling silver and gemstone nature inspired jewellery from Gugaw:
These sweet mini framed collages are from artist Steph Littlechild. They have a nostalgic homely feel and would be perfect as housewarming gifts and other such presents, see and shop them HERE!
The art section of the store has expanded further again with the addition of these prints from Gorjuss, aka Suzanne Woolcott! The dreamlike portraits evoke childhood, wonder and dark mysteries and at only £8 each are a wonderful treat for your walls! See them all HERE.
This cute cute summertime tunic is the latest addition to the Bonbi Forest Indie Emporium from Victrola Studios! It has a sweet print of little birds sitting on a chandelier on a super soft banana yellow long tunic...Go HERE to buy.
FINALLY last but not least we have a whole load of romantic flavored jewellery from the popular Eclectic Eccentricity in store today as well...Plus restocks of some of their most popular pieces too. See them all HERE!
What a long post! Getting all of the new items for the store is one of my favorite parts of this job and it has seriously been a treat this last week getting all of these amazing goodies in the post everyday. I have more on the way too, so exciting!
It was actually sunny for a change (!) and the colours in the images are a little bleached out but they give the gist of the design...Two little Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip birds with the letter from God to Man, sitting atop city buildings and below is a smattering of humanity's ills - Bombs, broken hearts, and greed to name a few...The asphalt ones are printed in sky blue, fluorescent orange and white and the eggplant and plum tees are printed in mauve, fluorescent red and white. We may have them for sale for the band through the Bonbi Forest Indie Emporium sooon!
Then the tees arrived and stacked up into an enormous 300 tee stack! The little pic next to it has my test print tee...I always do a test print to make sure that the screen is printing well and the colours are good...
Then comes the actual printing! These images show 3 of the colours going down on different coloured t-shirts...Click the pic to see them bigger if you like. 
It is quite a long process as with hand printing process and the inks I use, the tees have to be hung to dry between each colour before the next goes on...The studio was swathed in cotton!
Then it was time for a carrot cake break...Mark's lovely mum sent this over to help fuel my printing endeavours. She makes excellent carrot cake indeed.
Then once all of the t-shirts are printed with their colours the heat setting and packaging begins...I didn't take a picture of the heat setting but below is the packaging...rollin' rollin' rollin'! 
And finally after all of that and lots of counting and re-counting (thanks Mum! She came over to the studio to help me with the counting and adding...) they were finally packaged and ready for the courier to come and take them away to the first stop of the Dan Le Sac Vs scroobius Pip mini tour!! Phew!
So that is what I was up to last week. I haven't managed to get images of the finished product yet but will post some on here as soon as I have them...
You can see how large they are alongside the post office stamp on the envelope. A little bit of research found out that they are Privet Hawk Moths, the largest breed of moth in the UK with a wing span of 12cm!! We get some pretty ugly and hairy looking moths bashing at our bathroom window when the light is on at night time but I've never seen one of these. If it flew at the window it would probably crack it!
It is my brother's birthday today too...Happy birthday Joey!!
Remember a couple of weeks back I mentioned I was one of fredflare.com's NEXT BIG THING winners 2008 (see here)?? Well the time has come for you to vote for your favorite (me yeah?) and give them the chance to win $1000 for their design efforts. There is some really stiff competition and I would love you to vote for me, you can see the other entries here, but make sure you don't get sidetracked by the other indie craft awesomeness because I WANT YOUR VOTE!!! hehe!
