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!

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!

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.

Multicolor Registration and Silkscreening

Color registration used to be my foe and involved lots of transparencies, single color at a time printing, tape, and a ton of time wasting.

After many methods, I've finally started using a registration board for lining up my color on the screens. This makes setting them up on press and getting reliable color placement super easy. I still use tape to mark were I lay my paper prints down at but laying all my colors at once instead of one at a time is a huge time saver.

I was first introduced to the registration board back when I took the Silkscreen Academy course from Ryonet. They offer a pre-made board for about $80 that's a bit fancy then what I needed. I got the idea to make my own when I visited Tilteed.com and saw theirs. You can make one like mine for about $12, plus some time.

If you are doing anything with multicolor you're gonna want to setup one up. I used a piece of 25" x 25" plexi glass that I picked up at our local Ace Hardware. Then I taped off a space of 24" x 20" ( my screens actual size), and marked in the center lines. On the back, I taped registration marks for various size prints.

With your board in place you want to print your artwork transparencies with registration marks, typically this option can be found in most Adobe softwares print window. You want to put some tape on your transparencies then line up the marks by eye. When all lined up, you simply drop your screen onto the transparency using the boarder lines.

Once done you're all set to expose...

I'm actually posting this while I wait for the above screen to dry! Be sure to join us Friday, Saturday or Sunday for more Silkscreen demos during our Black Friday 3 Day event!

A Sneak peak of things to come

This process video is a time lapse of me printing an updated version of my Binary Thank You Cards. This time in A2 format and later today, I go on the look out for appropriate envelopes. They'll be available in my etsy soon but also @ our BlackFriday Event. Come check them out, along with a ton of other goods!

If the above video doesn't work, please check it out here!

The Shop

Seeing as this is my 200th post, I thought it fitting to officially announce the opening of my new shop space. One of the primary reasons I moved from my apartment in the NW to NoPo was the promise that this space held.

I'm incredibly excited! Originally this space was a garage and had been used for home brewing. The current owner of the house had repurposed it as a dog pin and lounge space ( including a full size beer fridge) but in more recent years it's just been used for general storage. We removed a built in dog pin that was in the far left corner, installed a washtub over the french drain in the far right corner, installed a large chalkboard, some lights and modified a rescued cabinet from the rebuilding center into a drying and storage unit for the screens.

I hope to get my supplies sorted out this week and get going on two card projects for my Etsy shop before the weeks end. I also have several apparel projects in the works, with hopes of getting those printed by next week. Stay tuned!