Holiday Card Time lapse!

While printing this years batch of holiday cards I thought it would be fun to show you some of the process that goes into silk screening by making a fun time lapse of the penguin cards being made! I take you from exposing and hosing to getting the job off press in under 2mins! Don't forget, the cards are now available in my shop!

The Pull - Ladies in Hats

This past weekend The Pull was lucky to have Angela Sun come and use our studio to help create her Lady In Hat prints on muslin and a striped cotton fabric. When you use our D.I.Y Custom Screen Printing options to pull your own prints, you'll find your screen exposed and on press waiting for you to print when you arrive.
We mix the inks, and give you a demo on how to proceed. Then we are there with you through the printing process to make sure you get the best prints possible.

Here I am running the flash curer to properly set the inks while Angela continues to run prints on the press. The end result, these lovely 6" x 6" Ladies in Hats wall art pieces.

Angela will be offering these in her Etsy shop soon. I'll update this post with a link as soon as I have one. If there's something you'd like to print, please check out the D.I.Y Custom Screen Printing section of my website and Together, Let's Make Something!

Update!!! - As members of my email list should be aware, Angela has opened her Etsy shop and is not offering these lovely items for sale!

Roscoe's Hopped Barley Tea

I was approached by Cristina Dunseth to help make her 1 year wedding anniversary gift something special. Her husband brews his own beer, and she was getting some letter pressed 24oz beer labels made but also wanted to get some posters and T-Shirts done up. The artwork was printed without knockouts, so we achieved a three color effect by printing on top of the white in some spots and directly on the paper or t-shirt in other spots. I also found out that the poster was submitted to the HOW Poster Design Contest! So you might here more about this print in the future.

Update! While mostly focused on the lables, the poster is shown over at Lovely Packages!

Update two! The poster, labels and shirt were featured on FPO recently! The identity also won a 2010 Portland Ad Federation Rosey award! Congrats to the hard work and excellent design skills of HUB Creative!

Watson Invitation Suite

This lovely Wedding Suite was printed here at The Pull by Laura Trimmell, of CuriousDoodles, and myself for the Watson wedding.

Laura designed them and I helped print them. We used a combination of printing techniques, including inkjet for the small detailed txt on the back of the RSVP's, to Silk screening for the front of the RSVP's and the actual invites and even stamping for the envelopes. They are featured on the Oh So Beautiful Paper blog right now if you want to see more, and of course you can see more of them at Laura's Blog.

And as always if you have something fun you'd like to print, be sure to check out my DIY ScreenPrinting section.

Wedding Ties

So there's going to be a lot of work being posted from my good friend Matt Watson's wedding, but I thought I would start with these. These ties are the result of a collaboration between Laura, aka @Curiousdoodles, and Matt, with me setting up and pulling the prints. Each tie was intended as a gift for the groomsmen, the ushers and the fathers. The green tie, was the tie Matt wore as he was married.

We managed to print the ties with a 156mesh screen, with water based inks and with some tape registration, we were able to tile the pattern across the length of the tie. There was definitely some difficulties to overcome, and the ink didn't always lay evenly but overall we were pretty happy with the end results.

I'm really enjoying helping people print on items beyond t-shirts and loving doing work that holds so much meaning for the people receiving it. As always, let me know if you need any custom screen printing done.

Petri Baby Announcements!

Paul and Basia Petri came to me with a unique announcement idea to let their family know that they are expecting. The end result are the onesies above that Basia designed and I screen printed for them.

I was happy to help them spread their good news and in an effor to extend my own congradulations to the couple, I made them this wall plaque version of their design to hang. Congratulations you two!

Journals for Chase Jarvis and Crew

I'm really excited to post these images now that the gifts are in hand. About two weeks ago Laura got a visit from a college friend of hers, Michal Garcia, who happens to be an amazing photographer. He currently lives in Hong Kong but, he won a contest Chase Jarvis had held, and that brought him to Seattle to hang with Chase and his crew. He then came to visit Laura and did some wonderful portrait photography of us, our work spaces, and our crafts. As repayment we collaborated and made these custom Moleskin journals for Chase and his staff.

Each cover features an original illustration of Chase and crew heading for a photo shoot as flock of crows. We tried to embed a lot of jokes and details into the illustrations so I hope they came through. In addition to the covers, each journal was customized for it's recipient, Laura hand embroidered their name on the first page.

Michal was in SanFran and then Back to Seatle while we tried to get these printed up, so we ended up mailing them to him, I threw in a small surprise hand made Kraft paper journal for Michal. I hope you like it!

Arriba Ziba!

Arriba Ziba Hood to Coast team shirts fresh off the press! Featuring an original design by Heather Cummings these shirts were printed using water based ink on Slate colored American Apparel Sheer Jersey T-Shirts.

These shirts were a bit of a pain to print with the little heat wave we have passing through portland. My studio lacks AC, and with the high heat and low humidity my inks were drying faster then I could pull them. I ended up washing out the screen 3 times to finish this job up. So I think it's time I cough up the cash and get some climate control, it seems I'll need an AC for the temp and a humidifier to keep the air from being to dry...

If anyone is interested in custom silkscreening, give me a shout and we'll work something out!

Hot off the press - Pocket Notebooks return to diskgrunt.etsy.com !

Just in time for back to school, there's two new pocket notebooks in my shop featuring a cute lil monster trying to remind you to bring a pencil and a penguin thinking of his favorite meal. Joining them is a reprint of one of my most popular notebook designs from last year, Herding Your Thoughts, featuring a loving sheep dog herding a group of sheepies.

Get'em while their hot!

Fresh off the press - Custom order

Thought I'd share these bachelor party t shirts I printed up late last week. A shirt was made for each member of the party, with the Bachelor getting the red one. The design was supplied to me and the shirts were printed by hand with water based inks on American Apparel sheer jersey shirts. If you're interested in custom prints, either printing your design or having custom artwork made, let me know.

Mini Stickers!!

These mini stickers are fresh off the press today! While silk screening stickers may not seem the most prudent way to print them, it is at least the most fun. These stickers are 1.7" wide by 2.75" high. This allowed me to use an entire 8.5" x 11" sheet with no waste, getting 20 stickers per page! I printed two sets of 20, one in red and one in black for a total of 800 stickers!

I stepped up the setup at The Pull a few months back with the introduction of an exposure unit. So far I've been amazed at what a difference it makes in the level of detail I can pull off. This run was printed using a 230 mesh screen with a dual coat of emulsion, which was crucial for the very fine line and font details. As always, everything was printed using water based inks.

Anyways, if you're in PDX tomorrow come join CuriousDoodles and I at First Thursday! I'll be giving out stickers and showing of my new stuff. Hope to see you there!

Monsters V. Robots

I mentioned these prints in a previous post but have finally gotten them up into my etsy shop. Each one is hand silkscreened and chronicles the start of the Monster V. Robot wars that are sure to occur once they've finished wiping us out. Each illustration was printed only 10 times, creating 10 sets of the 4 prints, each signed and numbered on the back. You can buy them all together for $120 or pick and choose at $40 per panel.They come with an easy to affix wall hanger and each panel was treated with a light poly coat to protect the image. The plywood is FSC and the inks are non toxic and water based. Everything was hand made by me. You can order them from here.

Fresh off the Press! Tweet and Qwack cards!

I've been pretty busy the past two weeks, mostly printing stuff for other people, so it's been nice to have the press to myself the last couple of days, allowing me to get my "Tweet" and "Qwack" cards printed up! These will be available in my shop soon but if you happen to be in downtown portland for First Thursday art walk you can swing by to visit CuriousDoodles and I. We'll be between Kearny and Lovejoy on 13th from about 5pm till 9pm (weather permitting).

I'll also be showcasing a set of limited edition "Monsters v. Robots" wood panel prints tomorrow ( more on those later). So come visit and check out all the great artist and crafters. Thnx.

Reunion Shirts that Don't Suck

This is the second Reunion shirt to come out of The Pull this summer! Super low run ( only 15 shirts made along with a handful of posters) but a lot of fun to draw and print. This was originally design for an AA slate shirt, but do to the hastiness of the job we ended up using these heather gray shirts. While I still like the design, the line work doesn't pop as much as it could and part of me would love to see a second color. Click the image below for a closer look at the details of the illustration!

And speaking of reunion shirts that don't suck, check out this shirt CuriousDoodles recently printed at The Pull.

If anyone needs custom tee's designed/printed, let me know.

i Heart Art PDX - Promo Silkscreen Flyers

I Heart Art PDX is a unique collaboration between Etsy.com, PNCA, and the Museum of Contemporary Craft that's goal "...is to support and advocate for Portland’s vibrant community of makers by fostering dialogue, inspiring activity, and offering access to resources that are otherwise difficult to find."

I was approached by Isaac Watson on doing some promotional flyers for them to hand out during this weekends "Super Colossal Spring Sale" that Crafty Wonderland is hosting at the convention center. Given that I missed the registration deadline for the craft fair, I thought this would be a great way to get some exposure there for my press, The Pull, while helping out the I Heart Art PDX organization there.

Everything about this project was done pretty last minute and in the middle of another print job. I was supplied the logo artwork and ended up creating the lil' monster illustration and adjusting the flyer layout to fit all the elements in. Once the design was done I was able to get 300 flyers printed in about 9 hours. That's not the fastest I've done, but but given I was working on my own, and throwing in a flash dry between color hits, I think I did pretty well time wise.

If you want to get one, be sure to swing by Crafty Wonder Land this weekend and visit the I Heart Art PDX table. On the back of the flyer are dates for various workshops being hosted throughout the spring and summer.

When I finished up my print job and started cleanup, I cracked open a Full Sail "A Light-Bodied Nonetheless Hella Good Limited Edition Lager" and was greeted with a very satisfying message.