DIY Silkscreen printing at home - How I started - The Hidden bay lodge studio

Hi steemians
Now as I have blogged about how I renovated my garage to make an open studio at home. I´m going to tell you a bit about what I am working on in the studio.

I have been silkscreening a lot as I ran a shop in central Reykjavik for a long time. I was doing T-shirts and T-shirts and more T-shirts…

I don´t even have photos of some of the T-sherts I made and a few times I did print for others for example one theater performance.

Yes I was kind of a victim of success in selling my T-shirt designs as I didn´t have much time to make new things and over a long period of time I was doing most of the same 20-30 T-designs (some of them my design and some of them my husbans but some of them we did together).

Well I also made cushions, tote bags and baby overalls as well, leggings and long sleeved dresses, aprons and oven gloves at times.

Me and my husband were also making sketch books, postcards and fridge magnets with our designs as well as sing old retro book and magazine covers and changing the titles.

(This is the middle shop space on Klapparstígur)

Our shop started as an open workshop down town in a tiny space and I was going to London a lot to buy old clothing on markets so we sold second hand clothes as well.

(This is from the first space on Klapparstígur)

I was also sowing clothes, changeing old ones, handpainting on bags and changing shoes with studs and stuff.

But in 2008 we moved our shop down the corner to a space on Laugavegur, the main shopping streeet.

At that time I ran a silkscreen studio in a bacement apartment on Laugavegur.

It´s not as complicated as it seems to silkscreen and you don´t need to have all these tools for example a heat press or a crab or an infra red heater.

When I first started I had no clue on how to do it. I had just opened my shop down town in the tiny space and I stopped a few people I saw pass my shop window whom I new had taken courses in the graphic department of the Art school in Iceland. So I grabbed them to ask them a bit here and there.

I myself studied in the multimedia department so I never learned this technique. But the first question is for example, where can I buy the material? There was only one guy in Iceland running a wholesale with silkscreen paint and material in his garage (hahaha, not unlike me now).

After buying the material I needed I grabbed the next person I saw down town, "Hey, what do you do next?"

Then I started putting the silk (nylon net) on a wood frame (painting frame was cheaper) with a staple gun like I was upholstering a chair and then I locked my self in the bathroom of my shop where I poured the light sensitive material over the frame and let it dry till morning.

I didn´t have a light box or anything but I had an old fish tank light so I just bought an ultra violet light to put in it. I read something about timing and distance from the light but I remember using a bunch of VHS videotapes for a long time to make the correct distance from the frame on a table to the lightbulbs.

Still today I use this same light but now I hang it in a chain. I had made a photocopy of a picture on a regular transparency film and laid it on top of the frame with a glass plate taken out of a big photo frame on top. As I had no such thing as a heating press or an infra red heater at that time I baked the t-shirt in my oven at home.

Soon after that I got a workspace at an artist complex called "Klink og Bank" but it was in a huge abandoned building that the bank had taken ownership of and at that time lent to a group of artists. My workspace there was a huge kitchen with almost new industrial ovens as this had been a big cafeteria before. Me and my best friend were baking T-shirts on an assembly line at that kitchen for months. When I lost the workspace as the house was torn down I purchased a heat press and later a silkscreen crab.

A few years later a friend told me that there was some kind of a silkscreen tool standing abandoned on a parking lot waiting for the rain to ruin it. He didn´t quite know what it was but he thought it was a silk screen tool. I went there and found the infra red heater. I took it home and fixed the electricity plug and it worked well. I only use it though when I´m printing on a thin fabric that is not good to press in the heat press or if I am doing more than one color.

When printing with multiple colors I start by using one frame with the crab and put the infra red heater over the fabric for few seconds so the surface dry´s enough to turn the crab over to next frame and print with the second color without the frame getting the ink transmitted on it. I have a crab with 4 arms so I can print with as many colors. One color print is still my favorite though. I´m kind of Soviét in that matter ;) And when using big frames like the big fish cution I just use the table.

Now I have started to screen-print in my home studio after not having a studio for two years but I used to do it once in a while in a spare room in the house. It was actually the room that had all the remains of the shop stock in it so I had very limited work space there.

I´m still doing my cushions but I started doing the haddock pillow (shaped like the fish itself) and a shaped sea shell as well as a Nightingale pillow. I now have added a kitchen towel with the haddock as well and a dish cloth.

I print on the fabric of the cushions but I use the method of transferring for the towels and dishcloths. Then I print the photo on a special sheet of paper with a glossy side on.

Then I spread some powdered glue on it and heat it with a hairdryer. Then I can keep the prints in my drawer for a long time before using them or use them straight away. When dry I put them on the fabric where I want them to sit and press in the heat press.

I also do my design logo like this but I sew them on the cushion covers as I sew them together and on the towels as well.

I recently tried to print on a plywood plate but I started to make wood postcards and tags with the fish. I would like to find thinner plywood though but the hardware stores only sell 11mm thick the thinnest. Maybe I have to find something like veneer or something. But even if I don´t the 11mm is ok.

But the transfer on wood was successful but it needs just a few seconds in the heat press and I have to be careful not to press too long or hard because then it bleeds a bit.

Now it is also on my to do list to make a better silkscreen frame with multiple haddocks so I can do the transfer faster. I only have one small fish on my frame now but I just made that one as a test.
I have started to draw a new picture for another cushion in my sea series.

I am also making stuff out of clay and cement now and I´m experimenting with soap making and candles and I have been doing some silicon molds my self. I will talk more about that in the blogs to come.

I am going to let a text sheet go with the towles that tell a bit about my studio and describes the name. Something like this:

The old Icelandic word "Handraði" means ; What I keep in my chest or coffin of goods. The word is composed of two cyllable´s "hand" wich means a hand and "raði" wich means row or a stack or even a wood rail in a coffin or a chest dividing it into compartments. So it is some stack of goods in a chest that are reachable by hand.

Every item from "Handraði design" or the "Comfort coffin design" as I choose to call it in English is handmade by me. Silkscreened coushion covers, dish cloths, kitchen towels, oven gloves and aprons, t-shirts and baby overalls. Concrete flowerpots, treys, and candle holders, candles and soaps as well ad healing ointments made of Icelandic herbs and last but not least my elderflower jelly.

I have my open studio store in my former garage at Huldubraut 1 in the oldest part of Kópavogur at Kársnes. It is in a walking distance from Reykjavík. My hose has gone under three different street names through the years but Huldubraut takes over in the middle of the street called Marbakkabraut. The name Huldubraut 1 would translate as Hiddenstreet 1 although I hope you find it. I welcome you to my studio whom now goes under the name: The hidden bay lodge

On the back side of my paper tags I have this text:

In my comfort coffins belly
is a seashell and cushion fish
towels, elderflower jelly
soul-food served as soap on dish

Í handraðanum á ég ker
viskustykki og púðaver
smyrsli og sápur á steyptum diskum
sálarfæði með fuglum og fiskum.

The Hidden bay lodge
Verbúðin við Hulduvör

Some of my photos are old and blurry I apologize for that and I can do a better silkscreen step by step tutorial whith photos when I do my next frame.
Live well for now
M.