Crafternoon

Even though I didn't do any of the real work on this next project, I did offer tons of moral support so I figured I had rights to post about it. That, and it kind of fulfilled one of my life long dreams. Silk screening.

My book club is having it's 5 year anniversary next weekend. All the members of the book club are buying shirts with the quote, "The first rule of Book Club is: you do not talk about Book Club." It's a play on the number one rule in Fight Club. We are going to all wear the shirts to our August meeting, go see Eat, Pray, Love, and then go out for dinner and drinks to celebrate. We will be having a book exchange where everyone has to bring a new book with the number 5, or the word "fifth" in the title or somewhere on the book. Should be good times.

My crafty friends and I wanted to do something special for everyone and, well, it was a good excuse to have what my friend calls a craft-ernoon. So we decided to make some totes for the group. I did a little research and had suggested trying out a stencil using freezer paper, but my friend scoffed at me and busted out all her silk screening supplies. I still haven't seen her craft room, but I imagine it looking like an art supply store with aisles and aisles of crafty goodness.

Anyway, she basically did all the leg work, so I can't get too detailed here. Inspired by the t-shirts, she created a logo for us and put the image on the screen. I am not sure about the process, but I am pretty sure it involves some magic. We all got together and help silk screen the image on the totes. Here's some (iPhone) pics of the day's events.

We tried playing around with the color by adding some white in it. We only had acrylic paint on hand, but figured it wouldn't harm it too much since it was just totes and not anything anyone was going to wear. But the pigment in this silk screen paint must be ridiculously potent because after adding nearly two bottles of white acrylic paint, our red paint came out, well, red. So, this is the color we ended up with. Red.

This is the practice run on one of Mr. Bean's old t-shirts to make sure we were going to achieve perfection.

Here my friend is applying the paint on a tote. So exciting. You'll notice our little template we rigged up in the bottom left hand corner of the picture. We did this we could keep the image centered on the tote. It was just scraps of cardstock taped together at the corner to ensure that we got it right every time. And we did. Plus or minus a one or two. Or three. Definitely no more than four.

The final product!!! Perfection!!

Don't they look pretty?!?!! I get giddy just looking at them. TOTALLY doing this again. With my friend's help, of course.