printing with a car, instead of a printing press!!..yes you did read that correctly.

The lake scene linocut was bothering me, for two reasons, The image needed tidying up as I wasn't keen on how the sky looked, but the bigger issue was that I don't have a printing press and burnishing an image of this size just wasn't working out...

I have spent all morning googling making printing presses, they are all too large for the space that I have available and a bit too big of an undertaking when I would only use it once in a blue moon, In the back of my head I had remembered something about printing with a car, there is a good youtube video of this (which I now cannot find!), but using what looks like a woodcut, rather than a lino cut...

nothing ventured, nothing gained, I have a car, I don't have a printing press. So it was time to cobble something together..

I glued the lino block onto a thin piece of ply, but that exhausted the supply of ply, scratching my head, I found an old plastic chopping board, thick and robust.

 To (try and) make sure that the paper didn't shift while it was printing, I made a hinge out of duct-tape (are you thinking McGyver yet?)

 The stack for printing went board+linocut, paper, two blankets to pad it out a little, these were cut from an old woolen blanket, I tried with both one and two layers and it didn't make much difference.

 And then under the front wheel of the car, with the hinge towards the wheel, to miminise movement.

 This was the first attempt, I realised that either I need fatter tyres on the car, or I needed to reposition the stack and go over it a few times.

This is the final print, for this one I ran the car over six times, three times across the width X 2.

If you look really closely at the print, there was a little movement of the image, but I am very happy with this.

The side had a little bit of ink 'missing, so I did a little bit of touching up here and there.

Linocut Cygnus and lough derg

So I wanted to try somethign a little more elaborate and I was out of inspiration for any repeats, so i had a go at a picture, i was inspired by some of the work that I saw online, but wanted to do one of the lake near my house.

The linocut was a slightly different design as it had a swan flying across, but I didn't like it and took it out, just left the constellation cygnus instead. I tried working with block printing medium and oil paints and it just served to remind me that

• I really need a press for working on paper
• I hate using anything that is not water soluable.

So I went back to fabric, and printed up a couple of tee-shirts, all of this work is a first attempt, there are plenty of problems to iron out, and I need to mount the lino cut onto a block of wood as it is bending back on itself, which makes printing a bugger. For the tee-shirts I put the block down face up and tee on top, which made it a bit messy..but for an initial attempt, i am happy with them..

 the next two were initial proofs on paper, but it gives a clearer idea of what is going on..

 sky in this one was tidied up a bit, the fuzzy edges will definitely be cleaned up when I mount the block onto wood.

Feathers, lino cut, fabric printing

So this today's work, feathers this time, I cut 5 different sizes of feather, again all individually so I could play around with the arrangements, I don't love these as much as the mushrooms, but I am pretty happy with them.

 this is on a fairly coarse piece of fabric, so there is a lot of texture with the prints

 This is on yet another piece of fabric that I tie-dyed about 9 years ago...

 Dense print on a fabric that someone gave me, the colour doesn't 'read' very well on screen, it is a kind of lilac

 Close up of the same print

 A totally different arrangement, fading out to grey for the smaller prints (ink was running out!!)

Bookbinding, leather bound gratitude journals

These were a set of journals that I made for christmas presents. I had some crappy leather, bought at a discount from deprova leather..cheap because it was crappy, one surface had a nasty texture, but the back surface was a lovely suede, it also had a nice edge, I cut the covers to take advantage of the raggedy edges of the leather, as  much as I could.

 I stained them pinkish with printer ink as it was thin enough to soak in, without clogging the texture of the suede or making it stiff.

 I glued some sari fabric on the back and then did a stitched binding, adding in a few scrapbooking pages for interest. I decorated the fronts of each one, slightly differently. They were time consuming, so only very close friends got one!

two quilts and a moral

The first of these two quilts, the log cabin, was a top that I had started to piece over twenty years ago, Some of the scraps came from a friend who was then working at a couture house in London, (the queens dressmaker!) and some were just bits and pieces that have been added over the years. In the end I started to really dislike the top, the fabrics were just too scrappy, there was no over all theme, it wasn't well made. But as a result of a craftster challenge I decided to get it finished...Now that it is finished, I don't hate it, but would never part with it as it represents a huge chunk of my life, marriage, divorce, daughter, living in 3 countries, countless house moves etc etc...

the next quilt was much more recent and has a moral. it started life as a coin stack quilt and was intended for a colleauge that had a baby boy, but I realised that they wouldn't really appreciate it and so bought them something instead. So I added to the top intending to make it into a full size one, Not huge, just enough to sit on the top of a double bed...Which I did, but at that stage I was seeing a guy...who loved it, so I gave it to him as part of his christmas present....we broke up about a month later...

the moral is, never give quilts to new boyfriends!...it can be such a waste... lol

Mushrooms, linocut, ...I may be a little obsessed!

Last night was cocktail friday, lychinis (very nice!) which inspired another stab (not literally) at lino cutting, There were no mushrooms in the cocktail, this was just an image that I saw on pinterest and thought I would have a go at trying to reproduce (it is not original!) I cut each mushroom seperately which allowed me to vary the placement.

 I do rather like the red on pinkish tie-dye, the busy pattern comes up as an overall softer feel like this.

 This was a piece of floral fabric that I had knocking around, that I really didn't like much, it was very old fashioned, but the addition of the very dark mushrooms makes it pop, softens the original print and gives almost a 3D feel...love!

 One mushroom missing, giving a more spacy look

This is destined to be a pillowcase cover.

Anatomical hearts lino cut on fabric

My second lino cut, anatomical hearts, Love how this one turned out!

 I tried overprinting red on black, freehanding the registration, I rather like the 3D effect that it gives.

Close up of the hearts on a preprinted piece of fabric

 And on a tyedyed piece. I dyed this one years ago and now the whole thing has a very trippy feel.

Linocut fabric printing flamingos

This is the start of another new obsession, I scored a load of lino from a kind soul on Jumbletown and it lay around for a while until I signed up for a fabric printing swap, so I had a go. My first try was pink flamingos. And I really like it, the flamingo body and beak is hand coloured, printed using speedball screen printing inks for fabric and printed onto some vintage fabric.

 this is the lino block that I used, I don't bother mounting them onto wood as it allows me to position more carefully if I can see where the image is, although subsequent blocks have even more of the excess lino cut away.

I made a bag out of the two types of fabric...!

Art journal,

This was hand bound with coptic stitch, I used some stencils from Ed Roths new book, but most of the writing inside is freehanded, a combination of backgrounds, some linocut prints and scrapbooking papers. And some random images from the web.

I added some envelopes and skinny pages (so new pages can be stuck in) into the binding.