i scream for silkscreen

This weekend I had planned to make all my Christmas gifts. I would dream up ingenious plans for each of my unique and brilliant friends, and craft away with a song in my heart until Sunday evening, when, lo and behold, I would be all ready for Christmas. Heck, there might even be time to make gingerbread cookies for the gals at the office.

Evidently, this did not happen. I did nothing crafty nor Christmassy all weekend. And to top it off it, on Sunday evening my mum reminded me that I haven't sent Christmas cards out yet. Which means I haven't made Christmas cards yet. Gah! New priority.

So tonight at 8:30pm, I decided to start silkscreening. For the first time in 13 months. Here's what I learned from my crash course back into the craft:

1) Preparation is key. When I took a silkscreen course last fall, this was my teacher's mantra. Did I follow this essential guiding rule? No. But did I wish I had? Several times? Yes. Nothing went horribly wrong; it was more a case of "Hey, where's the...? Oh yeah, I didn't prepare that yet..."

2) Get your gear ready to rock. This is much like Lesson One, but here I'm referring to me not having screwed the hinges onto my board yet, and then not having a drill, and then using a nail and three sizes of screws to make up for the lack of a drill. Oh McGyver would've been proud.

3) Paper stencils stick to paint. And tear. But only blue paint at 10:30pm.

4) The pantry makes an excellent drying rack for papers. Yet another reason to love the pantry.

5) Check what colour the bathtub is before you rinse out the screen. After I cleaned up, it looked a little green around the edges. I scrubbed away (and won!), but in the end, I'm pretty sure it was not my permanent fabric ink staining the tub, but instead my roommate's green soap. Eww.

Tomorrow: Phase Two!