Balzer Designs

Screenprinting with the Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild

I looooove taking classes.  I think you know that by now.  So when I found out that my local Modern Quilt Guild, The Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild, was offering a free screenprinting workshop this past weekend, I jumped at the opportunity!

Even though I have done a lot of different kinds of screenprinting before, I decided that I wanted to go to the class nonetheless.  Why?  Well, a few reasons:

• Classes are a great opportunity to get to know other creative people.  I was delighted to sit at a table full of friendly and chatty ladies.
• No matter how much you know, you can always learn something new.  It might be about the technique.  It might be about teaching.  It might be about the kinds of questions students have.  It might be about supplies.  There is always something to learn.
• Inspiration abounds in classes. The other students are wonderful creative resources!
• Classes are time that you carve into your schedule for yourself.  Self care is vital to happiness and taking art classes is one of the ways that I take care of myself.
• It was free.  What have I lost -- other than a few hours -- if it's awful?

I had lots of fun and here's a peek at what we made in class (FYI: there is a swear word in one of the following images -- don't scroll down if that's a problem for you):

I made two screens in class -- a flower and a face:

If you're interested in learning how to screenprint at home, there are tons of free YouTube videos on the topic.  And lots of great books like, Screenprinting at Home by Karen Lewis.  The two instructors for our screenprinting class took a class with Karen and taught us one of the techniques from that book.

I hope you enjoyed today's post! Thanks for stopping by!

Two Classes at The Ink Pad in NYC

Last month I taught two fabulous art classes at The Ink Pad in NYC.  Take a peek at the fun we had:

Every time I teach I'm always reinvigorated and refreshed by other people's talent, creativity, commitment, and excitement.  The best part of class -- teaching or taking -- is the people in the room! Thank you so much to everyone who came out to class.  I don't think I'll be doing any more in-person teaching for the rest of the year, and this was a great way to go out with a bang!  (I do hope to have some new online classes up by the end of the summer!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Creative JumpStart 2019 is on Sale

In case you need some inspiration for the weekend and beyond, for a limited time Nathalie is offering 20% off this year's Creative JumpStart.  Just to remind you, Creative JumpStart features 31 mixed media tutorials -- each video is short and to the point (7-10 minutes).  The lesson I contributed this year is all about stamping and masking to create this house art:

If you'd like to sign up, I'd appreciate it if you'd use this link as I will receive a percentage of any sales generated by clicking through that link.  Thank you!

I hope you have a great weekend!

Nature Printing with Gifted Leaves

While I was teaching at The Ink Pad, one of my students kindly gifted me with some leaves from her garden. 

I took them home and had a great time printing until the leaves started to fall apart (and for a little while after they fell apart too)!  You can see a 30-second video of the printing process below:

And here are the prints:

Some of these are ready for a frame (especially that first one) and others will make for lovely backgrounds and collage papers.  This experience did make me long for unique leaves beyond the heavily available oak and maple leaves in my neighborhood.  That's what I've always used before for nature prints and they're nice, but feel so basic to me.  So...if you spy someone sneaking around your garden picking leaves up off the ground, it's probably me!  ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

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To learn more about how I gelatin print, check out my online class on the subject.

Floral Printed Fabric

So you may recall that I carved a block only to discover it had a flaw:

After much thought, I decided to ignore the flaw and just love the stamp.  So, I took it for a printing test drive!  Here's a video of the printing process:

You can see that I printed on top of a white commercial fabric that has white polka dots.  I like experimenting with print-on-print. I was also vaguely thinking that once the ink dries I might try overdyeing the fabric to see if the polka dots resist the dye...!

Here's a peek at the printed fabric drying:

To print on fabric I use block printing ink for fabric and a soft printing surface.  The ink takes 24-48 to dry depending on the climate you live in.  Otherwise, it's the same as printing on paper!

Here's the fabric:

I love how it turned out and I don't think that you see the flaw at all.  I’m excited to experiment with different colors of ink and maybe print the block on the diagonal?  And we will have to see about that overdyeing too!

Thanks for stopping by!