diy screen printing, pt. 3 - lessons in problem solving

I was so on top of everything all quarter. Everything except one thing: making these little zines or artist books that I proposed I would make for a project. At first they went along perfectly with the photographs I was making, but then my work shifted a little and they didn't seem as relevant. Still, I very much wanted to make them. I just kept putting it off. I would work on the stories, and the layout of the books (I was thinking of them as zines but I think now they are more of a little handmade book...the title is irrelevant, I suppose). But I didn't get around to printing them. Screen printing them, to be exact. I LOVE to screen print. I just learned how earlier this year and I am really excited about all of the screen printing possibilities in my future. However, it's kind of a big commitment compared to say, inkjet printing them.

I had it all figured out though. I was completely finished with everything else, so I would simply do all my screen printing this past weekend, just in time for finals week. Then I was sick for a few days. Time was running out! Monday, I got to work. It did not go smoothly. First, the light bulb in my "exposure" lamp burned out...after only about 3 hours of use total since I bought it! It went out Monday night, after I finally had everything ready to go. I went to bed.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and went to the hardware store first thing to replace the bulb. Funny thing: there are only really serious handy people at the hardware store at 8 am on a Tuesday. I was looking pretty girly in a pink jacket and rain boots, and buying a poinsettia plant and light bulbs...at 8 am...got a few strange looks! But I had been meaning to get a poinsettia plant so I took the opportunity when it came to me! haha The new package says the bulbs will last 2,000 hours apiece! Um, what! I was so furious. The previous bulb had come with my lamp and like I said lasted ~3 hours...was it like those batteries that come with stuff and only last 1/4 as long as regular batteries, I wondered? I got home and changed the bulb, only to discover that the one that CAME with my lamp, was the WRONG voltage! Seriously! Super dangerous! It was 130 V while the lamp CLEARLY read in all capital letters, don't use a bulb over 120 V! I got back to work.

I'm not going to lie, my photo emulsion was expired, by 3 weeks. It had been refrigerated the entire time, though, and I thought 3 weeks would not be a big deal...turns out, it was a big deal. If you are reading this because you searched "DIY screen printing, etc., etc." (I know people are searching that and finding me from my stats--that's cool, welcome, maybe I can teach you what not to do today!), do not used expired emulsion. Just don't do it. Okay, I KNOW emulsion is expensive, and I know maybe the nearest place you can buy it is 10 miles away (okay, that was me) and it's raining and you just don't want to drive across town, but you're going to regret it if you use it. What happened, you ask? Well, it just never hardened all the way. When I would wash out my screen, the front would look fine, but the back would look hardened but then become sticky from the wash out water. Maybe if I had increased my exposure time from 25 minutes to 1 hour, it would have worked, but do you have 1 hour to test that out, and then to burn your screen every time? If you do, by all means, try it.

So I finally replaced my emulsion, got home, got back to work, and the rest went pretty well. I did not finish all three of my books. I only finished one, in an edition of 8. But that's okay, I have the pages all ready to go on transparency for the others and maybe I'll get to them next week, or maybe next quarter. I'll be in a studio class devoted to screen printing 6 hours a week next quarter, so I should be able to knock them out no problem.

My home screen printing studio is still pretty sweet, despite its initial hiccups. This was my third time to use it since I got everything set up (almost 5 months ago), I will shamefully admit. I am planning to use it all the time now, though, so get ready! If you've been wondering what sorts of new products will be in my Etsy shop in the next month or so, screen printing might have something to do with it, *hint, hint*! I am working on a small winter collection to start things off, so stay tuned...that's all the spoiler information you get for now.

In my next post, I will show you the actual handmade books I was printing!

Also, coming up this Friday, December 9 to Wednesday, December 20: My 12 days of Christmas! This is the time I have in between school ending and going to visit my family for Christmas, and I'm going to do one Christmas activity per day and post about it. It's going to be amazing! Cookie baking, looking at Christmas lights, making ornaments, and the list goes on...I will be posting lots of photos and DIY tutorials!

turn your handwriting into a font

I spent the weekend in bed sick, watching episodes of Felicity until I got to the end of the series (does anyone else think the end is strange?). I don't really know what I had, but I am feeling much better today. At first I thought it was the flu, but luckily it was not. It wasn't a cold. I don't have any other guesses. Corey was awesome and made me soup and took care of me. It's finals week but fortunately a lot of my final projects/critiques/whathaveyou were completed last week and I have only a few obligations this week, so I'm not very behind. Today I am resting some more and finishing up one last project that I was supposed to have finished over the weekend: screen printing three zines.

I've had an interest in zines since I was a kid. I was quite the nerdy child, with a love of stationery and all things paper, home printers, writing utensils, stickers, stamps, etc., etc. The creative side of me loved writing stories, and the nerdy side of me loved formatting those stories and making copies of them (yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds!). My dad works with computers, so we always had one around, as far back as I can remember (and even before). For example:

Yep, that would be me. I remember learning to type on a word processor (a few years after this photo was taken...haha), and getting into trouble plenty of times for using up too much of that printer paper that is attached at the ends and has little feeder holes going down the sides. I remember rationing out pieces of colored paper when I got so lucky. I remember the magical day when we got a scanner in our home.

All that to say, I strongly believe my wanting to be an artist comes directly from these creative moments of childhood.

The other day I stumbled across Writing Fonts. It is a website where you can upload your own handwriting and turn it into a font (for $7)! This brought back memories of a time in high school when I attempted to make a font of my handwriting using a free program I downloaded. It was actually really neat, but the spacing was all off so I could only use it in Photoshop where I could control the space between the lines of text. I decided to give it another go with the Writing Fonts website. It took me 3 tries to get all of the text written evenly (it's difficult to eyeball the height of each letter and make it all equal in their template that you must fill out), but I am pleased with the result! Once I decided it was complete, I paid $7 to download it. Not bad at all considering how much time they saved me if I would have tried to do it myself again.

What am I going to use this for, you ask?

Well, I use my handwriting in my custom Etsy designs, but I won't be using it for that. I want those to be without-a-doubt handwritten and I don't want someone to compare the letters and realize it was a font. I am working on some other things that I think it will be useful for, though. For example, those zines I mentioned earlier. I am doing a series of hand-pulled screenprinted zines with autobiographical stories in them. I type out my stories first, then had been writing them out and scanning them in. I sort of hate writing them out and scanning them in, but I also sort of hate the way they look in any normal font. I think this is the perfect solution!

I'm almost done writing and formatting...then on to screen printing...I will share what the zines look like once I have them assembled! For now, here is a sample of what it looks like written in my new handwriting font:

I think it looks a little more child-like than when I actually write things, because the height of the letters is not perfectly even (like I said, the template made that difficult), but I still really like it.

expanding one lonely apricot: part 1

One thing we do not discuss often while studying to be artists is....dun dun dun....I am just going to say it...making a living once we graduate! It's kind of a taboo subject.

We all want to keep our reputations up by putting off this attitude of, "Well, I'm going to make a living off of my art, of course!" And many (most) of us are interested in teaching at the college level. Don't look at the statistics if you want to keep on hoping these are viable options for those who have just recently graduated with their MFAs! But rather than drown in a pool of self-pity while I wait for a tenure-track job to magically fall in my lap, I am simply putting my efforts into planning for the inevitable period of transition that I'll be entering come June of next year. Are you in a similar boat? Well, let me share my thoughts with you.

I teach one photography class per quarter as part of my MFA program. I love being a teacher! I always thought that I would, and I'm happy that I was right. Every quarter, I have around 25-30 students in my class, which is a lot! Facing the challenges that come with teaching have given me more confidence as an artist and just in general. Of course, I would love to be a full time college art teacher in the near future, but I understand that normally takes a few years of part time adjunct work followed by lots and lots and lots of applying to find.

So I have been asking myself, "What else can I do?" in the meantime. If I find myself teaching one class next fall, I will count myself lucky--but I can't live off of that. So, what else can I do? A few thoughts have entered my mind on this subject. Retail is always at the back of my mind, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat to make ends meet...but is that really what I want? Short answer: no. There are probably other part-time jobs available here that did not exist in my college town because this is a bigger city and has more of an art scene. I'd be okay with that. But lately I've been thinking about the bigger picture and instead of asking myself, "What else can I do?" I have rephrased that question as, "What else do I want to do?"

Working for myself has entered my mind more than a few times. I've been doing lots of research, reading, planning, and thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that if I start pushing for it right now, expanding One Lonely Apricot is a perfectly reasonable goal, and really not very far-fetched. Planning for expansion has made me realize that my already-established shop has way more potential than I've been tapping into. I've set a few reasonable goals for the next few months and I have big dreams of taking it to the next level by summer 2012.

Here are my first three steps, which I would like to complete by January:

- Develop a few more products at varying price points since my shop is now almost entirely custom illustrative work. I already know what I want to add and I just need to get to work making it! I am most excited about this. I think being excited to make the products is my first good sign. I bet you are wondering what the new items are going to be....for now it's a secret!

- Increase exposure to my blog and shop. I am making every effort to make this happen!

- Launch onelonelyapricot.com...A couple of months ago I purchased this domain and all the webspace I need! What am I waiting for!? I don't know. I have just been procrastinating.

More is in the works. I am excited to turn this part-time-project into something bigger. Do you have similar goals for your creative projects or online shop? Share them! Maybe we can work on this together.

new work & creating creative cycles

This is one of my new photographs. I haven't been posting many of them here, sorry! I have plans of sharing more...

Lately I have been achieving this perfect balance of making new work and being inspired to make more new work. I don't always magically feel this way, and in fact, when I don't, I often beat myself up about it. After so many years of studying art making, you would think that staying in a cycle of creating things all the time would be easy...right? Maybe it is for some people, but I think for most of us it takes a little conscious effort to keep it up.

What do you do to keep up your momentum and find inspiration? Here's what I have been doing lately:

- I write down EVERY single idea I have that could potentially relate to my art. The ideas I later find unworthy still usually manage to evolve into something else that I can use. I have a composition book and a sketchbook and I try to keep at least one of them with me at all times. Ideas often come to me suddenly, and I dare say many of them would leave just as suddenly if I didn't write them down!

- I look at other art, but not too much. I look at just enough, until I feel this impulse to create, but not so much that I feel an impulse to imitate. Leave room for your own ideas to develop! But don't try to create in a vacuum where you never ever look at the work of others. I also try to look at a mix of emerging and established artists. It can be daunting to only look at well-known people in your creative field.

- I make something every day (it can be something really small, like a half hour drawing, or documentary photographs of my garden) and I make something towards my serious body of work every week*--even if I don't know where it's going, or I have a million excuses, or I think it's going to turn out badly. It can be tempting to keep on planning, or make just one more trip to the store to get supplies, or do more research, but the bottom line is that you just need to get in there and create something! Making small things every day even on days when I am not shooting my serious work helps me keep up the motion of creating. It is also a good exercise that helps me remember how fun making art is. I would recommend that no one limit themselves only to serious work. You also never know what will become of your side projects.

*I'm always envious of my artist friends who have processes that allow them to be in their studios every day creating work piece by piece! As a photographer, I feel my process is a little different. I do assemble my photographs piece by piece but personally I don't feel I have "created" anything until I press the shutter release button! Others may feel differently, but with this sentence what I meant was actually getting to that final point of shooting a photograph.

How do you keep your cycle of creativity going? Does it come naturally for you or do you find it to be a bit of work?

Next time I will share what things I find distract me from my work and how I am aiming to limit those!

identifying your creative process

Yesterday went so well! I stayed on my schedule all day and it felt so good at the end to have accomplished so much work. I am itching to post the photos I made but I'm making myself wait! I realized that when I share them right after making them, I feel this urgency to hurry up and make something else since I've just revealed my new material. But making creative work takes just a little more time than that and I don't really like to hurry through it (who does?).

I realized a few other things as well. I don't think I can do photo shoots five days a week. I hate admitting that because I love the idea of the 30 day challenge, but I just don't know if I can make it work for me. When I have a really good idea, I just want to keep working on it all day until I finish, and when I don't have a good idea yet, I think I should spend the time brainstorming, sketching, reading, etc. until I do have the idea, instead of forcing it. There is a lot more to my work flow than just shooting, and I need to make time for that.

I've learned a lot about my process through all of this and I am excited to keep going. Even if I'm not shooting every day, thinking about, researching, planning for, writing about, etc. my creative work five days a week is going to be a big improvement. I tend to put those things off in order to do my everyday responsibilities like lesson planning and grading, assignments from classes I am taking, etc. But really it's just as important as those other things which have clear deadlines. Also, not photographing every day will give me a chance to work on other creative endeavors, such as screen printing, drawing, and sewing, because being an interdisciplinary artist is important to me.

In the writing seminar I took this summer, we spent some time talking about our creative processes and work flows. We had about fifteen minutes or so to make a drawing of our creative process! This was mine. I enjoyed this exercise because I think it's beneficial to try to identify the cycle of your work. Ask yourself a few questions:

1. What inspires your creative work? Personal experiences, nature, society/media, other art?
2. From that source of inspiration, where are most of your ideas coming from?
3. What can do you to encourage more ideas? Writing, sketching, reading, conversing, exploring?
4. What keeps you from producing as much finished art as you would like? Lack of time, a mental block or fear, lack of ideas?

For me, answering these questions helps me pinpoint areas of success as well as weakness:
1. I'm inspired by my own experiences, objects of significance, and the way we live our everyday lives.
2. My ideas usually start with a personal story and from there I relate them to my feelings about the culture I live in.
3. I get a lot of ideas from reading, brainstorming in my sketchbook, and writing down personal anecdotes. I also find that having good conversations with certain people helps me develop my ideas further.
4. Usually I put too much pressure on myself to come up with a good idea right away, which gives me that sort of "writer's block" feeling. If I start brainstorming while I'm in the middle of another project, I feel more relaxed because I have more time to come up with something to work on next before I find myself in between projects.

Tell me about your creative work flow!

the pros and cons of predetermined structure and how to find your own balance

I've noticed that structure increases productivity for some artists, but hinders creativity for others. I believe that's why when it comes to making art independently (on one's own time and without a particular deadline), some artists are golden and others struggle. The way to deal with this seems to be identifying which category you fall under and finding ways to balance it. I know for a fact I do better with a predetermined structure, but as I talked about yesterday, I think I can learn to work around this weakness and become more productive without someone or some calendar telling me what needs to be done.

This upcoming quarter, I'll have fewer classes but more independent study hours. Monday through Thursday I won't have any commitments until 11:30 am, so I've decided that I'll wake up early and get to school by 9:00 am each day and use those first few hours to be productive. I am totally a morning person and would aim for earlier, but I have night classes several days a week. I don't have classes on Fridays and I haven't decided if I'll work from home or my studio at school, but either way, I'll stick to a similar schedule. I'd like to be seriously productive five days a week, and give myself a break the other two. Quarters where I've been at school six to seven days per week were not worth the stress in my opinion.

I can't move into my new studio just yet, so this week I'm working from home and changing some of my bad habits! I think everyone deals with getting into routines that don't really work for them, so I'm okay with sharing. This is what I'm making myself do this week to reset my working habits:

- Wake up by 7:30 am and get ready first thing. I put off getting ready when I know I don't have to be anywhere, and I'd like to change that.
- After I get ready, I start my coffee and while it's brewing, I do last night's dishes. I made this rule for myself in January and it actually works perfectly. If you have no dishwasher and a slow coffee pot, I highly recommend it. Doing the dishes makes my home feel so much cleaner! I try to remember to put a load of laundry in at this point as well so I can stay on top of that, even though during the rest of my working time I am trying to avoid cleaning anything!
- While I drink my coffee (at my desk! not from the bed or couch or kitchen table), I read the blogs I'm subscribed to and write a new entry--which is what I'm doing now. I think blogging is a productive activity for creative types and a good form of self-promotion and self-reflection so I'm definitely willing to make time for it.
- After blogging, I respond to pressing e-mails and make a to-do list for the day if I don't already have one (unlike other to-do lists I've made this summer, however, it cannot include anything except art and school related tasks! anything to do with cooking, cleaning, gardening, non-art errands, etc. has to go on a separate list). Then I number the things on my list and get to work! I'll take a break for lunch in the afternoon, and try to wrap up around 4:00, at which point I can pull out that other to do list, hang out with Corey, cook an amazing dinner, or simply relax.

While I work, I can listen to music, but not watch/listen to tv. I've been watching Friends all summer and I have a tendency to want to start my day off by watching "just one episode," but it becomes a distraction. This is just a personal choice. I know lots of people who draw and paint while they watch tv or movies.

What guidelines help you stay productive when working on creative projects from home or without an enforced structure?

p.s. I have some new blog features planned out! This afternoon, stay tuned for my first ever guest post! Tomorrow, I'll be starting a new feature highlighting artists I know which will include a Q&A session and photos of them working in their studios. And Thursday, I'm bringing back the thrift store finds feature. It's a week of new beginnings for the One Lonely Apricot blog.

revamping my 30 day challenge

My desk in my studio last year...can't wait to move into my new studio soon!

Hello, readers! It's been awhile...my apologies! I am getting ready to go back to school over here (a week from Wednesday--we start late on the quarter system) and checking things off my to-do lists.

I'm still working on my 30-day-challenge but I'm not going to post about it every day, and I'm actually rewriting some of my rules. It was stressing me out too much to do a blog post on it every day and was limiting my creativity. It might be good for some people but for my way of working it was just too much. So, instead I'm going to make a post about it once a week, highlighting what I did the previous week. These posts will appear on Mondays starting next Monday.

I will go ahead and be honest and admit that I took one week off from my challenge. In some ways I guess that's failing the challenge, but the whole thing has been good for me and a learning experience. I think the challenge actually made me see all the ways I hinder my productivity when I'm in charge of all of my time! Ouch. But that's a good thing. During my week off, I wasn't taking a break completely, however, but working on fine details rather than making finished photographs. This included gathering new props, sewing new flower masks, brainstorming, and writing about my ideas. Totally necessary stuff! I'm getting back into shooting daily but I'm only going to shoot 5 days a week. I'll use the other 2 days a week to do all of those other important things that I just mentioned. I'm going to start at square one and do this for 6 weeks, so that equals 30 days of shooting. After that I would like to keep shooting at least 3 days a week.

I have also given my content serious thought and have narrowed it down more than before. I'll be talking about that next Monday. But, the biggest change is that I'm going to be bringing in more personal anecdotes, and pairing them with the work. I mentioned before that I took a creative writing for visual artists workshop this summer. In the workshop, the thing I was inspire to write most was short, autobiographical stories. I actually have a lot of stories that fit in with the topics I'm dealing with in my art! So I just needed to realize that and put it together. My plan is to work on 1-2 stories per week, so I'll spend a few days figuring out how to illustrate each story.

I have also been inspired by Elise of Argyle Whale to restructure the way I work from home or from my school studio, when it's ready, when I'm on my own time. It's easy to make blog posts and do other work while sitting on my bed in my pj's but this morning I started off my day by getting ready and am doing my work from my desk all day! It's definitely an obvious solution to increasing my productivity but hey, being your own boss is hard. So, no more tv in the background for me on my work days, no more cleaning my home for half the day as a means of procrastinating my creative work. I'm going to have a lot more independent working time this quarter (versus taking a lot of classes) and I am going to make the most of it.

How do you stay inspired to get work done without getting distracted?