monsters hockey print

tonight is the last home game of the season for the lake erie monsters. at a game earlier in the season the spokeswoman or commentator (not sure what her title would be) had on a wide neck sweatshirt with an all black monsters logo print on it. i really liked it and looked in the team shop for it and online but it must have been an older style that they didn't carry anymore. so i decided to make my own. bella has a line of sweatshirts that are soft and a wider neck than normal - they're not wide enough to go fully eighties but i like them. i got alex and i these grey with black sleeve ones - they don't have them in youth but i get her a small and it works (she's practically swimming in it but whatever.) i found a logo online and made a screen for it and printed us our own apparel. i made john one on a long sleeve grey shirt. i will still support the team shop but i wanted this particular look and couldn't find it there so this time i crafted my own. go monsters, great season.

new nephew gift set #2

a couple weeks ago i showed you a very hungry caterpillar sleep sack and cap that i made for my new nephew: http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-nephew-gift-1-very-hungry.html and here's the set i gave when he was actually born. i hand lettering and screenprinted 3 onesies for him. we're in ohio hence the locally grown design: i think that's my favorite one. although i thought i was pretty funny making the "full of shits and giggles" - haha get it? babies are full of shits and giggles :) and then there's the "i wake up awesome" which is just fun (it could have printed better; the fine lines didn't work great, but i still like the design.) and i made him another crocheted cap - this one is sized for a one year old though so he can get to it when he's bigger. i thought it was a fun hat, but let me tell you before you venture into making one that those fringe are a pain in the ass. they aren't hard to do, but they took forfreakingever. i seriously almost gave up several times because i just did not enjoy making the mohawk part. but i did it, it's cute, and i added one of those awesome "this took forever" labels on the inside. i love those labels (got them on etsy) and i am going to be adding them to almost everything from now on :)

Happy Camper

i didn't get around to making my usual sugar lake shirts this year, so i went with camping shirts for a mini-birthday party theme. i hand lettered happy camper on some sketch paper, scanned it in and digitized it. i then printed it out on a transparency and created a screen of it. i made three different kinds of happy camper shirts/sweatshirts: plain black on grey shirts; white flocking on dark grey; and a black glitter on heather grey sweatshirts (for alex and i.) this was my first time experimenting with flocking and with glitter. in case you don't know what flocking is, it's that fuzzy stuff you find on old-school shirts and some greeting cards. so for both the glitter and the flocking you actually screen print glue instead of ink. with the glitter you then load on the fine glitter and let it fully dry; then shake off the extra glitter and iron to set. with the flocking you put on your sheet of flocking material, iron it right away; let that cool and then peel off the flocking sheet to reveal your design. both the glitter and the flocking have survived machine washing and still look good.

father's day screenprints

here are the shirts i made last year for father's day gifts. i designed them in photoshop and used my yudu to create the screen and print them. i have to give credit for the idea to my sister-in-law: she didn't come up with the saying, but the idea to put them on shirts for gifts. the saying...well, my husband started that one. i'm not sure when it started exactly, but when tooting his own horn he liked to joke and say "busy being right." he thinks he's hilarious, and of course his brother thought it was great too. somehow it started turning into a thing. then, one day on vacation, my husband did something really nice (not sure if he caught a fish or fixed the causeway or what exactly) and my daughter responded by saying "daddy is busy being best." haha, so cute, but of course that sealed the deal on that phrase. so then my sister-in-law thought it would be a fun idea to give our husbands shirts that say "busy being right." and give the kids shirts that say "my daddy is busy being best." it was a great idea and really sweet for the kids' shirts. now, i should think of a good one for the women :)

carnival goody bags

i showed you the shirts i made for alex's carnival birthday party. on the shirts i had screenprinted some silver ferris wheels. i used the same screen to create all her goody bags. i bought some super cheap natural fabric bags from oriental trading company. and then i printed the ferris wheels on all of them in black. i like them simple and plain like this with plenty of room for any size goody we decide to stuff them with. of course, alex thinks i need to add more color to them and print "carny" on these as well, but that's unlikely to happen.

screenprinting

just wanted to show you what screenprinting i've been up to lately. you can see my screen in the top left with the bright yellow ink on it and the squeegee. i usually fill the screen with as many images as i can so i don't waste emulsion and then i use painters tape on the backside to block what i don't want to print each time. the screen in the picture was when i printed my boogie beans shirt. the "i have old man gas." shirt was for a friend - long story, but it was a birthday gift, he seems to enjoy the joke and i guess he gets lots of laughs when he wears it out in public. the mustache shirts were also gifts - they're such a trend and what a fun shape these staches are (i even made one for myself). the "i heart me." is a shirt that i made for myself, i like it. i made the copyright 2007 for alex (i printed that on top of a one color gray tie dye that i made - the "i heart me." is on one of those tie dyes also). i made more girl scouts shirts - which really seem to confuse people out in public and they want to know why the girl scouts gave me a shirt for being kicked out! and finally the doofenshmirtz shirt was my experiment in two color process - i love that show. the two color came out nice, it  would have been better if i could have done a second pass on the character in yellow but the screen was sliding and it would have made a double image if i tried.

christmas gifts: screenprinted shirts

i'm a big t-shirt wearer and i rather enjoy screenprinting (especially with my yudu). and when you are making gifts for a number of people then screenprinting makes sense. i made a few different shirts this year as gifts. first shirt is for a place my in-laws frequent called sugar lake. the next shirt, which you can barely see in the picture, is a Merlotte's waitress logo shirt for the people that are fans of either the sookie stackhouse books or the true blood show (well, really just the girls that are fans since it's the waitress logo). and the third shirt i made was an inside joke for my friend who got kicked out of the girl scouts when he was a counselor for them - but even if you're not in on the joke it's still funny to have a shirt that says "i got kicked out of the girl scouts". i even made one for my daughter who's four now.

jessica's baby shower: the gifts

the first thing i made for jessica's baby girl is this amigurumi crocheted bear from a pattern on etsy by Ana Paula Rimoli. after i made this bear alex wanted one so bad that i made her one too (just a different color pair of undies). then i crafted 9 onesies for the baby in different sizes. in the first picture, i made the heart onesie with dip dyeing and a glue batiking technique (instead of wax you use blue gel elmers glue for your resist and then wash the glue out later) and then i stitched the hearts as the final step. the tie onesie is screenprinted and then i appliqued on the tie. the ice-cream cone is screenprinted. i tie dyed a couple of other onesies (one a spiral method and the other an accordian fold method) and i finished on the accordian folded tie dye with appliqueing on some fruit. the "ga ga", "new", "copyright 2010 /  made in america", and skully onesies are all screenprinted. i think they turned out pretty well and she will be a pretty stylish little baby.

shoe project: pair 1

i bought seven pairs of plain different colored china doll cotton shoes and am planning on experimenting with each pair.  this is the first pair that i've made. first of all, for alex's 4th birthday party (months and months away) the theme is an alice in wonderland tea party and i'm supposed to be the red queen. these are going to be my red queen shoes, the fabric on the flowers is the same fabric that i am using for my skirt. so first thing i did with these shoes was to try to screenprint a houndstooth white print on them. i've never tried screenprinting shoes before, it wasn't awesome. but then i took a black sharpie and outlined some of the pattern and i think that saved it - i don't mind it looking rough and unfinished, that's kind of the look i'm going for. when i tried ironing in the screenprint (not that i plan on running in the rain or snow in these but still wanted to try to set them a little) the white seemed to soak in a little and fade but that's ok. then i cut out circles of skirt fabric in sheer red, black and white polka dot and yellow stripe (which you can't see in this photo) and used a red button to make flowers to embellish each shoe. overall, i like how they turned out and i think they'll look super cute with my red queen skirt once i actually make that.

this is the end.

if you're a fan of lost then you know what these numbers are. this is my lost shirt that i screenprinted (again using my beloved yudu.) i wear this shirt every tuesday - it's kind of my game shirt for lost. the show is sadly coming to an end this week! there's only one more episode before the series finale on the 23rd (notice the 23 is one of the infamous numbers.) i'm so excited to see how the show ends, but i'll also be so sad that it's over. i am really really hoping that i'm pleased with the final outcome of the show - it could be great or they could blow it. namaste.

kim's baby shower gifts

my friend kim is about to have her first baby in a month! we just had her baby shower for her at work last friday and all the gifts from me were home-made. she doesn't know if she's have a boy or a girl yet, so i tried to keep everything neutral. first, i screen printed her some onesies. i have a yudu (which is a screen printing tool that makes the photo-emulsion process a lot easier) and i love it. i was able to design all these on the computer and print them out in black on a transparency and then use my yudu to prepare the screen and print them onto the onesies. kim seemed to like them, i think the baby p and the copyright 2010 were possible favorites. and then i also crocheted the monkey for her using a pattern from "Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet" by Ana Paula Rimoli. Amigurumi is a super fun and easy form of crocheting and I just love Ana's patterns. i think the monkey went over well too.