Yesterday at ArtVanGo and more

Had a wonderful day on yesterday at ArtVanGo. It was very,very busy.

Great to see so many people. 

People came from all over the place despite the awful weather, from as far away as Sleaford and Kent. Thank you all for coming it was so lovely to see you all.

So many different ideas floating around too. The day went too fast. Looked at my watch when I arrived, 10 past 9, started to feel a bit peckish, thought it must be lunchtime soon and it was almost half past two!!!

Managed to take a couple of photos:

Many thanks go to Ann and Julia, a couple of friends from Fen Edge Textiles, for taking charge of the printing press and helping others to make prints.
I didn't get chance to have a go myself on Saturday but at least I managed to get the hang of where to start (well at least I thought I had) and made a few at home today - mind you, I won't be winning any prizes with my efforts for some time yet. :)
This is the first one.

 And this was the second print from the same plate - a 'ghost print' ? Not sure if that is the term.

 And this one is the third print, to clean the plate off, on tissue paper.

I have a very limited amount of supplies, inks, paper etc and printing plates - that's my excuse anyway. But I love doing it. Just need a lot more practise - and supplies!
I love the way the plates look once they have been inked up.
This is before:

And after:

I also used one of Ann's glue scribbles to print from. The one on paper didn't come out too well but the one on tissue paper was OK.

And now I am going to really annoy Carol McFee *lol*. It bugs her when people see shapes within shapes, (serves her right for having such a fab armchair!) but I couldn't help noticing that this bit looked like a very abstract rendition of 'mother and child'.

So once I had finished playing and tidied up I got the book out again and realised that you lay the inked plate face up on the printing bed first then the damp paper. And what had I done? Paper first with the plate laid on top. Obviously makes a difference.

Just can't leave this fish alone. This is a Thermofax print with Discharge Paste on black discharge velvet.

And still talking about the screens and following on from the last post, once I have zapped the Lutradur and Xpandaprint I then colour the pieces with all sorts of different colouring mediums.

With these next pieces I let the Xpandaprint dry thoroughly and then coloured the piece before heating. It makes a real difference to the finished colour.  Then of course you get a different effect if you heat the piece while the colour is still damp rather than wait until it dries completely.

These pieces were coloured with Indigo Navy Procion dye on one side then flipped over straight away and coloured with walnut ink on the other.

 This is just the procion dye and it was zapped before the dye had dried out completely.

When I print with Xpandaprint on to Lutradur I sometimes place a kitchen towel underneath before printing as the paste tends to go right through the fabric and this gives you another surface to work on. But I made the mistake of leaving the Xpandaprint to dry on this piece while it was still laying on the kitchen towel with the result that it stuck together - fast. I coloured it with Procion and Walnut Ink as before, left it dry and when I zapped it I let the edges of the kitchen towel singe with the heat.

Love the result.

Not sure how I would use it, but what the heck, just think it looks good as a fragment.