sunprinting workshop with Sweet Paul + the Makerie

 

sweet paul makerie retreat workshop

April 16 + 17 I had the great pleasure of teaching sunprinting workshops at the Sweet Paul and the Makerie retreat held at the URBN’s corporate headquarters in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The weather was fantastic and perfectly sunny – which is VERY helpful when sunprinting!

Three workshops were held at full capacity and everyone had tons of fun. The makers had the choice of a terrain silk scarf or a tea towel. For my usual sunprint workshop we first make a bookmark to get the process down. Then we forage for materials and create a 5×7 paper print. The fabric was a bit of a challenge and being rather windy didn’t help, but pinning to foam core boards worked well.

sweet paul makerie retreat workshop sunprinting silk scarf

The laundry looked great drying in the sun. Everyone’s creativity was great. Lots of unexpected surprises, like the holes from the tables creating polka dots THRU the foam core. I still can’t quite figure out how it happened, but with art they are always happy mistakes.

I made some new friends and had a blast!

digitally alter Gelli Prints

Mixing real paint, real paper and Photoshop has always worked for me. Photoshop allows me to fix things that are not quite right with my prints once they have dried. I can digitally erase or add things precisely where I want. What control I can have after making a fun mess with paint!

Each digital paper is created with SEVERAL layers in Photoshop. Various blending modes are used and sometimes I also adjust the colors a bit.

Here are some digital papers I made from that Gelli Print in my last post.

dinny's garden | digital paper dinny's garden | digital papers Be Mine dinny's garden | digital papers collage

All of these digital papers are available for sale at photoDUDS

photoDUDS | Be Mine Digital Paper Pack

great use for Gelli prints

It’s so much fun printing with my Gelli Arts Plate. However, I have a problem finding something to do with ALL of my prints. My art journal is a natural spot for them, but today I found something else for this print.

dinny's garden | gelli plate mono print

While wrapping up a  gift for a friend I found the perfect size box, but it had no lid. So I improvised! Recycled paper shred saved from some other gift cradled the glass jars in the box. Heavy craft paper was wrapped around the box and glued to itself, so all my friend had to do was slide it off to get the goodies. My gelli print was not large enough to completely wrap the present, so I tore off a strip to wrapped around the kraft paper.

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Alphabet rubber stamps spelled out THANKS with brown ink.

dinny's Garden | Gelli Print Gift Wrapping

Tied with baker’s twine and it’s ready to ship. I hid bubble wrap under the kraft paper, so it should survive shipping (fingers crossed). I hope my friend likes the treats inside, I had fun wrapping it.

 

 

mother nature

The other day I spotted something odd from my window. I wasn’t quite sure what was at the base of the tree across the street. Deciding to investigate with my camera, I found this.

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mushroom macro

It was an enormous group of mushrooms! All around the base of the tree, and it was a rather large tree.

Simply amazing.

hand carved stamps

My latest crush is on hand carving stamps. With my family’s birthday season in full swing, I was feeling inspired to make some helium balloons. With my vintage Speedball carver in hand I made 2 stamps. Check out that price… $2.55 and it’s made of WOOD!

vintage Speedball linoleum carving tool

I really love to take something like this and simply stamp them onto paper with plenty of space around each stamp. It’s fun to see how different each stamp turns out with a variety of textures.

hand carved balloon stamps

Then I scan at high resolution and use Photoshop to clean up. Now I have 10 balloons that look unique. For me, that’s the way life is and my art should reflect that. For something like this, I don’t like each thing to look the same. They ended up like this.

 

stamped balloons

These balloons are available in my ETSY store HERE

My FIRST hand carved stamp was made using that very Speedball carver. It was for my high school art class. That actual linoleum was ridiculously hard and impossible to do any fine detail. Born to Run was just released and this Springsteen fan bought the album. Miss Bernarden was not thrilled with my topic choice, but I actually sold a few prints to friends. This was WAY before ETSY!

vintage linoleum block cut