I'm with the (book)band

Happy September!!


On this, the first day of September, and a day closer to the end of this blistering hot Texas summer and drought (hopefully) I come bearing tidings of a new collaboration/invention to share!!

So, picture it, our bookclub is celebrating our 6th anniversary and Selina and I know that we have to do something to top last year’s awesome (if I do say so myself) 5th anniversary bags. So this time, we thought small, kept the elements of silk screening on cloth, and took it to the next level, because that is just the kind of crazy craft-inistas that we are.

Selina came up with the tag line…which is so good that I can’t waste it here—yet. And we brainstormed on a way to incorporate it into our project. Originally, we thought a button badge type thing, but the hardware for a good set was too far out of our price range. Then we moved on to buttons, (called cover buttons) like the cloth covered kind that you can use for diy projects. I didn't even know these existed!! The idea was to (make the silkscreen first) then silkscreen  the quote onto the cloth, then cover the button…then to thread a length of elastic through to make a loop and sew together. Viola, a headband for your book to mark pages! Ingeniously (not) called a bookband!

Some tips to remember...
When silk screening, we found that the tighter the weave, the better
and for the cover buttons, a less stretchy fabric works better as well, your print won't be crooked.

Of course, none of this came together easily, we like to try things out the hard way first just to make sure we aren't missing anything...as evidenced in the pix with the rejects...
Last night was the party and they were a hit. yay!!

my screen...so proud of it. the 4th time was a charm this time.

We tried it with yellow ink, but it wasn't as readable as the black..

the tools of the trade

the finished product

All wrapped up and ready to go..

And don't miss Selina's post on our craft!!!

meet the flockers

Let's see, dear reader, as I am somewhat sure I only have one :) if I can recount the crafts of the past month... I should start w/ the bonanza from August which was getting re-aquainted with the world of silk screening, which I love! A few years ago when I tried it for the first time, I stuck with more crude and time consuming method of cutting out stencils from plastic. This time, I went to the big leagues, photoemulsion, which is not for the faint of heart. I read about it all over the net and what you hear is true, it takes a lot of trial and error. Lots of errors on my part until I finally got it to work. It's all in the timing of exposing your design to the light, and I was overdoing it by underestimating the power of the SUN!

So once that was down, I 'burned' my design which was to screen a tote bag for my book club buddies. With lots of help from my awesome crafting buddies, we had a good little assembly line going, and voila!