Horse printed and Craft fair

Greetings from rainy Dupont. Its been one of those on again/off again weeks with rain. We even had a nice little snowstorm a couple of weeks ago. It's been pretty amazing that every time I have taken our dog out for a walk, the weather has always been nice. God's pretty cool in the little things he does to bring sunshine in our day.

After arriving home from TX I had the Tacoma is For Lovers craft/art fair the very following weekend. I had time to sew a couple of things for one half of my table, and then I had prints on the other half. Here are a couple of shots from the very Valentine's day themed fair:

Here is what else I spied from around me. If you live in Tacoma area, the TIFL fairs are really worth making it to. The wares are affordable and there is so much variety. I will really miss going to them after our move. My table was next to Laurie Cinotto's. She has the most wonderful things made from paper. As a printmaker, how can I resist! Of course I did not take a picture of her table, but you can see her beautiful things at her website. I already had one pin, and had to splurge on another one as well. I also ended up getting a pair of earrings from Maija McKnight, who does equally beautiful jewelry (and who, of course, I did not get a picture of either...).

So after a busy week of sewing for the fair and unpacking after the trip, I got a chance to print the horse plate at a local high school with a small printshop. The press was a nice Conrad Machine press. Mental note, the day when I save enough money for my own nice press, make sure it has gear reduction drive in it. I was breaking a sweat and growing biceps like Paul Bunyan cranking the plate back and forth though the press 40x !

As you can see from the picture above, I was using a sheet of mylar for registration. That always works well for me. I have dried my prints by now, but am hesitating signing them, because I am not quite sure if I want to add watercolor in the effect of chine colle, and have a light yellowish background for the whole print area. I like the effect of setting the print apart from the border that way, but its a pretty big area to cover uniformly, so I can't decide if I can handle the agony of trying to manage it. Should have thought of it before I printed... We'll see.

I also took down the last exhibition I had in Kent last week. Now I have two more classes to teach and 10 more illustrations and I can finally pack my bags and move. We are having a lot of trouble because of Army bureaucracy, but I hope it will be ironed out in the next couple of days before it gets too late. I am still waiting for the interview I've been promising, but in the mean time I have a guest writer share some tips on polymerplate printing (intaglio style). Excited about that. Have a great week, Nappi (our dog) wishes you a happy early spring!