Hi all! We survived Irene! It wasn’t more than a windy drizzle here at our place, but we are keeping those greatly affected in our thoughts and prayers.
Friday, after scurrying around collecting survival supplies, I headed up to Pyramid for the August Member’s Only Workshop. Each month a different free class is held for members, and this month was a screen printing recipe swap! Great idea, right? I planned on sharing my favorite lemon cake recipe, but once I saw the index-card size of the print area, I made a quick switch to my new favorite beverage of choice: minted lemonade.
The steps involved are fairly simple. First I hand wrote and illustrated my recipe onto an index card. Not being a perfectionist served me well…I sort of winged it and was happy with the result.
Next we copied our designs onto a transparency. Just used a regular old copy machine and regular old transparency.
When the screen is exposed to uv light, with the design underneath, everything that was black stays soft and everything around it hardens. So, when we sprayed the screen off with water, the design washes away, leaving room for the ink to pass through onto the paper. We lined up the design for printing, and I tried my hand at a few runs.
I was a little disappointed with my own prints. It may have been that I used fabric ink instead of paper ink (the instructor said that should be fine). They were all a little smudgy-looking with some areas of really dark ink and some where it didn’t come through at all! I know there is a learning curve to this stuff, so now I’m motivated to try it again soon and get a better result!
All of the others, however, turned out amazing! And these were almost all beginners, too! I got some great recipes to tuck into my little screen-printed recipe swap folder. I am for sure going to eat a “Rad Sammie” this week: fresh baguette slathered thickly with butter, then layered with thinly sliced radishes and topped with sea salt. Yum.
