Blueberry Park

This has been the longest week ever.

Waiting for screen printing lesson numero 2 has felt like an eternity.

Ever since I got home last Thursday I have been thinking, eating, sleeping, breathing patterns, designs, products everything!

So imagine my unadulterated joy when today came around and I could walk back into the workshop? Happy as Larry.

Today was really interesting and has given me more to think about than I thought possible.

We were asked to bring in an image of our own this week to make our own screen with. I spent the entire week trying to decide on which of my zillions of designs in progress I was going to use and which would be the basis of any future designs.

When I arrived today I still wasn't wholly decided which I was going to use (I'd narrowed it down to 5 possibles that I'd brought with me).

I very swiftly learnt a very important lesson - I was trying to sprint before I had even learnt to crawl. Everything I was trying to use was with an end product in mind. Gina very swiftly reminded us (me) that over the next few weeks we were experiencing and learning new process and exploring many different techniques and the specific design wasn't wholly important. It was more important to try out different types of images - photos, silhouettes, text.

I'm not sure why I was so narrow minded about this, but Gina's words were like a breath of fresh air to me and my previously dizzy head was cleared immediately and I started to slow myself down, no longer focus on the end product and enjoy every step of the process.

So back to today. We were split into 2 groups of 4, each to choose one or 2 images to produce one large screen. The aim of this was to clearly see the effects that different images produce. Rather than being blinkered in our own individual way of thinking, we were working side by side with people that see things in different ways. Such an eye opener in the best possible way.

Having had my wake up call today, to think about the entire journey, I have discovered that I adore the whole screen-printing process. If you would have asked me before we started what I was most looking forward to, it would have been to be able to print my own items for the business and the process was just something to get through. Now, i can tell you that the process is (obviously) an integral part of screen printing and one that I can honestly say I love.

That all said, I am pretty sure you can pick out which are my designs on the sheet above...

...but I am more than certain that next week you won't be so sure...