I know I've posted a demonstration of this before, but since my shiny new Gocco 'Stamp' came in the mail, I've found a much nicer, cleaner way to print properly aligned pattern repeats onto fabric + paper. And it's good to show the Stamp in action too. Contrary to my previous posts, it is actually a very handy tool to have.
Here's mister Stamp.
The stamp has a spongey base that's slightly sticky, so your screen sticks to it. The design on the screen is a pattern tile that interlocks with itself, to form an endlessly repeating pattern.
Here's my piece of paper with a couple of prints already on it. Sitting on top is my polyprop 'registration plate' with the design printed on it also. The registration plate is cut to be the same size/shape as my B6 screen, (plus a little bit extra at the top and bottom - i'll explain that later). The print onto the registration plate was done with the plate+screen perfectly aligned.
Okay so here's the stamp sitting on the paper, or should I say above the paper. The curved clippy things on the side make it so the screen 'floats' there until you push it down. Directly underneath the stamp is my registration plate. The top and bottom of the plate line up with the clippy things because of that extra little bit of height I added.
Once the registration plate is slid out from underneath, Stamp! My hand looks weird and huuuge in this shot!
The final print. The alignment is much better than my previous method - yay :)
For anyone wanting to print free of the Gocco machine I highly recommend the Stamp. You can get with or without the 'Stamp Kit for Cloth', nice and cheaply from Welsh Products for $36.50 USD. They're not sold anywhere in Australia unfortunately.
Thanks for the lovely birthday wishes :) Pete and I are spending the first week of our holidays just grounding ourselves before we head down to the beach. This means hanging out in the city, enjoying the art & craft supplies that Melbourne has to offer, and Pete getting ahead on a little bit of freelance. It might sound a little bit too 'worky' for a holiday, but sitting on the floor doing crafty stuff is what we love doing when we actually have spare time.
This holiday's project is bookbinding. Pete's found some awesome online tutorials on various bookbinding methods, and some vintagey book covers at a secondhand book shop to rebind with blank paper.
We weren't sure where to go for bookbinding supplies (none of the stores actively advertised it), but we found some great stuff at Melbourne Etching Supplies (go figure) and Melbourne Artist's Supplies (Little LaTrobe St). Here's what we got:
From left to right: headbanding (the decorative stripy stuff you see when you look down at the binding from above), a bone folder, binding needles, binding thread, a nice new stanley knife, binding ribbon, an awl (for making clean holes through which the binding thread goes), flexible binding glue.
If we get good at it I might post a simple tute if anyone's interested. A lot of the things above are nice-to-haves rather than must-haves.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Hello! Hope everyone had a great weekend - it was soooo warm and sunny here, which was extra nice because Sunday was my birthday. Now I'm 25! There's something strangely significant about that number. Like it's the end of one era and start of another. I know it sounds silly, but it makes me realise that I'm not going to feel 'young' forever, and is motivating me to really try and figure out what I want to do with my creative career.
Anyway, I might be a bit quiet on the blog front over the next couple of weeks - Pete and I have taken two weeks off work to do whatever we like with. Feeling a million times more relaxed already.
Lots of jewellery making has been going on and I should be able to post photos soon. I'd like to start putting things up on Etsy but first I need to figure out if I can get away with posting things as 'Letter' post rather than 'Parcel' post. Huge price difference, but 'Letters' have to be less than 20mm thick.
Two posts in two days! I haven't done that in ages. Holiday mode has definately started early around here - I spent almost all of yesterday doing crafty stuff. I felt guilty to be doing it during "work hours", but really... if I plan to make a business out of selling jewellery etc then this IS work. It doesn't feel like it though!
Yesterday was spent printing one of my patterns onto sheets of A4 paper - using a repeating-pattern-tile Gocco screen. This screen turned out heaps better than my previous ones. I think because this time, after the flash went off, I remembered to keep holding down for 5 seconds. This lets the heat transfer a bit longer and burns a better screen.
Damn, that was a lot of work, but definately worth it! These sheets will become packaging for my earrings etc.
Oh, I also discovered something cool for any PG-11 owners out there. If you want to be able to stamp your design onto surfaces outside of the machine, you don't have to buy the Stamp Kit for Cloth (although I've ordered mine already, bugger). All you need to do is release the stamp pad from the machine - it has a simple spring release if you detach it from the right hand side first. Ink up your screen as usual, place it down onto whatever surface u want to print on, and then push down on it with the stamp pad. It's basically the same as printing inside the machine, just upside-down! You might be able to do this with the other Gocco models, i'm not sure.
Have a great weekend :)
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Sometimes you work on these really labour intensive projects that just don't end up working. Like these two prototypes below. I spent hours cutting little shapes out of poypropolyene, to find the end result just didn't make a good earring. Maybe the left hand one would work as a pendant with some darker coloured material.
The whole process can be pretty disappointing... but at least it's one step closer to finding an idea that works. If doing this stuff was super easy then I suppose more people would be doing it, and then it'd lose it's uniqueness and value. For that reason I kinda enjoy working on labour intensive stuff ... so long as I don't completely ruin my back working over the coffee table :)
Anyway there's lots of good to come with the bad. Firstly, the awesome Shannon has been helping me out heaps, suggesting I try to sell my patterns here and also offering to take some of my jewellery to sell at her sister's upcoming craft party. Thanks again Shannon!
Also I went on a bit of an impulse buying spree and bought these three prints from ashelyg's etsy shop:
Veeeeery much looking forward to receiving them in the post. Aren't parcels great?
Meanwhile, I continued my purchasing spree by buying this design-nerdy hoodie from veer:
Ok, less spending and more doing - time to think up some new ideas that actually work this time. Wish me luck!
Hello, hope everyone had a good weekend! As usual Melbourne had some mad weather in store for us - warm & sunny one day, sideways-winds & buckets of rain the next.
Our weekend was good. Pete and I had some great success with one of his freelance clients - a natropath who is developing a range of herbal/organic body & health products. I've been helping him out by designing patterns for the labels, and all the while we've been keeping our fingers crossed that she'll actually LIKE them. Last time she came over the reaction was not so good: too 'cottagey', too 'old fashioned', 'looks like a doily'. So, we moved away from the classic/vintage feel and went for something a little more modern, which went down well:
It feels good to take my experiments with pattern design and put them to practical, commercial use.
Some progress was also made on the Etsy shop front. I stocked up on some more supplies at the bead shop and made some earrings, experimenting with some different designs and working with polypropylene. If only the stuff wasn't so damn hard to cut. And if only laser cutting wasn't so expensive - that would be so much fun to work with. Oh well maybe one day!
The shop banner will look something like this :)
Thanks for reading/listening and for all the support and 'company'. Sometimes I think i'd go insane without this blog and wonder how I survived without it.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Ooh excitement - I just ordered a Gocco Stamp kit for cloth! I remember reading about this kit awhile back but completely dismissing it because I couldn't see how it could be useful. But now, now that I'm trying to tile my design across fabric and paper and using my no-so-good squegee method to make prints... I can see how being able to use the in-machine "stamp" method outside of the machine would be very handy indeed. It's discontinued stock (whyyyy???) but I managed to find one Australian place that sells them. My order isn't completely confirmed yet but fingers crossed nothing goes wrong!
I wish I had more crafty stuff to post, but as it often goes my 'real' work is taking priority. But holidays + birthday are coming up soon which should provide ample time to seriously knuckle down and get that etsy shop going.
Meanwhile, some earrings WIP. Just trying to figure out a construction method that lets the flowers dangle nicely, before I make the other one:
The new ad for Melbourne is finally on TV! Awhile back I stumbled across them filming part of it in Centre Place - there was an actress walking a giant red ball of string down the laneway! I was immediately captivated and curious as to what the end product would be like.
It's an awesome, beautiful piece of cinematography that really capures what I love about Melbourne. It's backed by Joanna Newsom, and you can watch it below:
I love my city, and I also love productive weekends, like the shopping expedition we had this Saturday. It included our first trip to the Rose Street Artist's Market. Pete and I parked our car in the back streets of Fitzroy, but on the way there we stumbled across a quintessential little haberdashery shop down a side street (how very Melbourne). It had a sign out the front advertising fabric coated button making services, so we popped in to have a look, and came out with some trim and some huuuge buttons that Pete picked out.
On to the market. It was everything and more than I expected. All the stalls were great. There was so much good stuff to buy but I held back in case Pete decides to buy something from there for my birthday. I gave him lots of hints :)
There was a lovely chick there called Carla, who designs really nice handbags under the label of Emotional Baggage. I happened to be wearing my blue dot necklace and she commented on it, and encouraged me to try selling them. That's the second complete stranger in two weeks to say that, which is very motivating. So... I'd best go get on to it!
Friday, September 08, 2006
It's friday night and i'm home being boring whilst Pete's out at a poker night with workmates. I feel kind of lame, like i _should_ be out, but it's cold and wet out and I don't much like poker. So it's soppy movies for me tonight.
On the fabric printing front, I exchanged a couple of emails with a screen printer who'd be interested in printing my patterns - yay! So I'll go down to his studio some time soon to discuss prices. I've been there once before, it's very cool. A massive messy/arty/painty warehouse space on Easey st in Collingwood which is shared by a range of different artists. Such a contrast to my little office.
Took the quite-night opportunity to finish off one of my pattern ideas. I'm glad it turned out alright. The colour choice was accidental but looks quite retro so I kept it like that.
Today is a better day - I had a client meeting that went really well. We went to the cafe 'Journal' at the City Library which I really like - it has large communal tables which are good for meetings with a laptop. I am starting to feel back on top of things, yay.
I got a reply from the digital fabric printing place. Lengths of 1-5 metres (140cm wide) costs $100 (AUD). Preedy expensive, but I was expecting that. So hmmm, what to do, what to do. I can't exactly sell yardage at prices like that, so maybe this would be a venture more suited to printing packaging for jewelry and what not. Or perhaps I need to investigate the screen printing option further... any thoughts/suggestions out there?
I couldn't very well make a post without including a picture. So here's a little diagram I made recently about how to make a pattern repeating tile in illustrator:
Ohhh, I've been working way too hard this week. All my clients seem to want everything at the same time. Some of them have the weird notion that I should be working on their project and their project alone. It doesn't really work like that. And it also doesn't work in that if they take months to get back to me with content/feedback and are suddenly ready to go - I wont have been sitting around waiting for them with a nice big window of free time. But ahh well, i'll try my best to keep them happy :)
{/rant}
Anyway onto more happy things. I've been inspired by the very talented Kristen Doran to start getting some of my pattern designs out there onto *stuff*. Fabric hopefully, and maybe also gift wrap. Although with gift wrap, you really need to print sheets that are about A2 in size, which means they need to be offset printed, which isn't cost effective unless you get a large run done. Sooo, maybe I just need to prove to myself first that my stuff is saleable before embarking on that journey :)
Fabric printing however might prove to be a little more acessible. I've found a couple of places online who offer digital fabric printing services, and you can order as little as 1m for sampling! I'm just waiting to hear back on prices. Fingers crossed it's not too spenny and looks good.
It's mum's birthday coming up, so I've made her some earrings - some from scratch, the others from some old jewellery of Oma's. At the ripe age of 61 my mother has only just gotten her ears pierced. My brother brought a pair back for her from overseas not realising that she doesn't have pierced ears. Boys! So I took her to Hairhouse Warehouse to get them done :)
This weekend we wandered into the GPO* and this is what we saw - about 50 bright yellow canaries in cages hanging from strings in the central void. At first I couldn't decide if it was cute or cruel, but in the end decided 'cute' because they were so damn adorable and their little chirpings filled the whole space.
* For non-Melbourne people - the GPO is a fairly new (and very schmancy) shopping space in the middle of the CBD, built into the building that once housed our GPO.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Sometimes I come on here to write a post and wish that I had some interesting life stories to share, rather than just posting a torrent of crazy patterns. But it's just been work work work around here, and nothing I can legally show until it's in the public domain.
I've been giving a lot of thought to what to call my Etsy shop, and a few people have reinforced the notion that it should be Kirin something, to match this blog. Kirinmade? Kirincraft? Kirin Small Goods?
Oh I do have some news - I farewelled my brother and his wife today as they're off to live in the US for the next few years. He landed himself a job at Microsoft, whilst my other brother is already over there working for Google. (So i'm nerdy and cool by association).
Anwyay they got me a webcam and a microphone as an early birthday present so we can Skype together, which is pretty cool :)
I've decided to take the plunge and begin setting up an Etsy shop. What's the worst that can happen? Nothing sells. What's the best that can happen? At least one or two things sell... and maybe lots! Either way, it'll be fun to try. So, here's what I need to do first:
1) Buy materials (done - went to the bead shop and stocked up... forgot to buy more crimps though!) 2) Make jewellery (some based on existing designs, some new) 3) Print some more gocco paper and make packaging 4) Take photos 5) Think of a name for my shop 6) Research postage costs etc 7) Set up on Etsy
Any advice / suggestions would be very appreciated!
Meanwhile, here's some more patterns, which are a bit more geometriccy than my usual ones. Swatches:
Today I figured out how to print my Gocco pattern "tile" in multiple repeats, using a home made registration plate. In case anybody's interested, I thought I might document the process. Here it is!
My home made registration plate, made out of some polypropylene from the art store. It's the same size as a Gocco screen, but you'll notice I've cut an indent out of the top edge, leaving two little tabs sticking up at either end.
When printing onto this plate, I made sure that it's edges were lined up with the edges of the screen. None of this printing is done using the actual Gocco machine by the way... just my modified squeegee method - I'll explain that later.
Okay so here's the registration plate positioned carefully on the paper so that it continues the pattern. (I'd already done a few tiles at this point before I decided to take photos).
Here's a delicate bit - the edge of the screen is placed down on the paper so that it's touching the top edge of the registration plate (being careful not to bump the plate).The two little tabs sticking out of the top of the registration plate sort of fit under the curved corners of the screen.
The registration plate is removed, and the screen is slowly lowered down onto the paper (being careful not to let it slip around). The indent cut out of the registration plate means that when lowering the screen from a standing position, it lands exactly where the registration plate was, rather than slightly higher.
To perform the print outside of the machine, I ink up the screen as normal, cover it with the transparent film, and use a hard piece of plastic to squeegee the ink back and forth. Probably not very "screen friendly" but it's the only way I can think of. Other suggestions are welcome!
The final product. Not perfect, but I suppose that just adds character :)
A very attentive commenter just made me aware that I've had this blog up for a whole year now! Granted the first few months didn't have anything interesting up at all but still... that's much longer thank i thought! Time flies when you're having fun :)
This week has been a bit craft-quiet due to catching a cold and being super busy with work - I've squeezed in a few days of freelance next week, at the good ol' Lonely Planet where Pete and I first met - awwwh. Will be good for me to be around other creative people again for a little while.
Meanwhile I was very impressed upon finding this Sydney based designer/blogger who's actually taking things to the next level by designing, screenprinting and making stuff out of her own fabric designs. It's great to find someone who's doing all of those three things at once. Nice designs and quite motivating :)
Poor petey is still sick with a nasty virus thing so we're having a quiet weekend. we watched Memoirs of a Geisha last night which was so beautiful. Fantastic cinematography. Very inspring and reminded me of how much I love all things Japanese. I really should travel there some day.
Spent some time making some presents for the girls (using some shiny black beads that Maz spotted amongst the mayhem at the bead shop - thanks Maz!), and found a way to make use of some Gocco test-printed paper :)
(gosh I love Pete's camera - it makes everything look so much better)
I've got minimal chance of winning (because this guy has submitted lots of good stuff) but I submitted a couple of my patterns into a pattern comp, and the person with the most points gets a prize and also their design printed onto fabric to be made into different things.
So if you have a spare couple of minutes and the inclination, please vote for them here:
I've seen some really lovely vintage feel skin care packaging around lately, like the Melbourne based MOR. Designing something like that would be an awesome job. Pity the client Pete has (who is actually releasing a skin care range) doesn't appreciate vintage feel design and says this sort of thing looks "like a doily":
I just went to pick up some proofs from the printer and whilst walking home I saw this at the end of our street:
It's interesting how a pattern sometimes only looks good once you've got the colour combinations working just right. I tried this one in many other colour combos and it just wasn't working.
I'm thinking maybe it needs more going on in the background - some faded hills or something. Any suggestions?
Updated - added some gradiented blue hills in the background as Steve suggested!
Friday, July 28, 2006
Have you ever had one of those days where you wonder why you call yourself a designer? Where you're stuck with some sort of design problem and you can't find the solution, and then someone else comes along and can see the solution straight away? And it's not just that you're too close to it/have looked at it for too long & they have fresh eyes... it's that they can come up with solutions that you could never, ever have thought of because your brain just doesn't work that way. Doesn't think outside the square so easily. Gets stuck in little mental boxes. Bleh, that was my day today.
On a good note the hanging mobile i ordered arrive in the post today so I'm looking forward to putting it together and hanging it up tonight - yay!
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
I had this idea in my head of a french-wallpaper style pattern with lots of dots everywhere (and of course some little birds thrown in there). It turned out ok, but I think it needs "more". I might develop it further sometime.
Now, if only I could find some sort of studio job where I get to make patterns at times, now that would be great. I'm almost starting to lean away from the whole client oriented web/graphic design world and am getting more enjoyment making things. Crafty things to sell in shops maybe, like Douglas & Hope or Wilkins & Kent. Ahh, pipe dreams.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Managed to come up with another pattern last night, yay! The idea was to do one that half looks like branches with leaves, and half looks like hills with houses on them. It ended up looking more like branches with little mini houses on them, but that's ok.
I'm not sure if anyone's interested in how this pattern was made but i've uploaded the original sketch anyway just in case. In the sketch you can see a few things:
1) A rough grid drawn up in the background 2) A little marker on some of the grid squares indicating the various 'starting positions' of the repeat (in this case they're spaced apart by two-squares-up-and-1-square-across, like a chess horse has jumped around on the grid) 3) Identical branches drawn a few times in their correct positions, enough to show how the tiling works and how they'll fit together
After that it's just a matter of scanning, bringing it into illustrator and tiling it up properly. Heaps of fun :)
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
I've been inspired to try making some more patterns. It's interesting to see how the ideas I've had in my head can turn out in real life.We have this great book on our shelves called "Pattern Design", originally printed in 1903! It's written in great ye-olde english and says things like:
"To readers of a book upon the subject, no apologies for pattern is necessary. Modest as may be its pretensions to artistic consideration, it covers ground enough to command attention. It is here and there and everwhere around us."
Hehehe. It's written like that the whole way through - quite funny, but also quite insightful in parts. It talks about the role of pattern design in a world where things need to conform to the conditions of manufacture, and how pattern design can be extremely challenging and restrictive but also quite satisfying. It's got a lot of techical info on different forms of repetition, so i'll see if I can advance beyond a simple square tile ;)
Anyway I had a go at doing a more random hand drawn pattern which was fun - took a bit of thinking to design it so the waves line up...
*AKA Kirin Notebook, the name I gave my blog back in the day when I had a thing for giraffes (’Kirin’ - ‘giraffe’ in Japanese).
About
I am a Melbourne based textile designer and co-owner of Ink & Spindle, a boutique, organic and sustainable yardage screen printing studio located in Kensington.
