Storage and Monoprinting

Check out the book I posted a pic of, the author wrote another book called Where Women Create, I can't wait to see this book as well. I'm one of those people who are very affected by their surroundings. Junk, clutter, and a lot of noise are quite distracting to my creating process. I also thrive in an asthetically pleasing enviroment, read pretty into this equation.

I'm still having a hard time transforming my wet studio, in the basement, into an beautiful enviroment. It still looks like a basement no matter what I do. Plus all of the storage necessary for the studio looks really institutional as well. And that's because my hubby got it from the University for something like a dollar a running foot. Not bad for cabinetry. But it still looks institutional. Painting, later this spring, will cure a lot of those woes.

Monoprinting:

I bought vinyl for my screenprinting table today, at wally world. I no sooner walked out of walmart and the stuff was brick hard. Gross temperature change. We brought it home and immediately put it onto the table but alas there were creases already set in the vinyl from it being folded by the helpful staff at wally world.

But not to worry we came up with a way to get the creases out! Hair Dryer on the hottest setting works miracles on what would seem to be a hopeless piece of vinyl!

The vinyl is for my table for printing with the natural dyes. I can wipe up the surface when I'm done. Not so with a canvas table top. I know it has been suggested to use felt but here's a little truth about natural dyes and screen printing. While you can print with them, and while they can be made to be permanant, once they are imbedded in the table there's no way to heat set the color. I may put felt over the vinyl, I will experiment and get back with this. In the past I did this straight onto plastic, but plastic doesn't behave like vinyl does and just lived with the creases that were printed into the fabrics.