Screenprinting

Before heading to the Christmas break, on top of all the deadlines I found the perfect time to screen print bags for the Denise Wren exhibition. Originally I was going to make the bags as well, but soon after realising how tight my schedule actually was, I decided to opt for ready made bags and just do the printing and labels myself.

I researched and compared many different retailers and manufacturers for these bags and in hindsight I wish I had ordered some samples before choosing the ones I received. They were slightly more see-through than I thought they would be, so in the future I would most likely end up ordering from a different retailer, which would then possibly put the cost up. Later on I also had to create an invoice which was the first one to me, but luckily the recently finished Enterprise-course helped with this task majorly. As we had already agreed on the price and I had calculated all the material costs before hand, it was fairly easy to collate. Adding my branding on it also made it feel more professional and somewhat motivated me to work harder in the future.

The screen-printing itself went well! Like discussed before I ended up using leftover colours to keep the wastage down and environmental values in mind, which added It took me one afternoon to print all 10 bags, and another one to seal the prints and sew labels on. I had pre-made the care labels myself by using Illustrator which was a nice and exciting process and adds nice personal touch to the products.

During my Christmas break I received an email from the museum saying the exhibition was now on, and that the bags were the most eye-catching items in the museum shop! This kind of feedback of course makes all the hard work and stress worth it. I am very much looking forward to collaborate with them in the future and we have already discussed about the next exhibition.

Collaboration with the Kingston Museum

The last thing I did before boarding the plane to Beijing on the 10th of November was to receive a phone call from my dear friend Hannah, who just finished her MA studies on Art History this summer. She now works in a local museum in Kingston which has an upcoming exhibition by Denise Wren, a potter and a textile designer who studied, and later opened her own pottery shop, in Kingston. The museum was hoping to collaborate with local-ish artists to create handmade, Denise Wren -inspired products to the museum shop and Hannah had kindly shown my work and recommended me to the Visitor Services Officer Jessica. You can read more about the exhibition here.

Jessica kindly send me some pictures of Denise Wren’s work and I researched furthermore myself. She has a beautiful style of creating floral and plant-inspired, half-drop repeat patterns with thick outlines but filled with watercolours. This creates an interesting contrast between the symmetry of a repeat pattern and changing tones and organic unevenness of colour. The colour palette features some beautiful bright colours with natural bases.

For this project I am screen-printing tote bags featuring one of Denise Wren’s pattern. I chose this particular one as I loved the symmetry of it, and thought it would look beautiful in a cut out shape.

I created a print from it on Adobe Illustrator, and then played on different shape cut-outs, and how they would look like on a basic canvas bag.

The timetable is tight and these bags need to be ready in the shop by mid-December, but I believe it is doable. Luckily the facilities at our university are amazing and I have been able to create the labels for this project myself. I am currently awaiting for the canvas bags to arrive, and hopefully will have them all printed by the end of this week.

I think considering the environmental impacts is important on every project I do, therefore we decided to opt for leftover colours for these bags. In the end of term there are often tons of leftover colours from student projects, in a variety of colours. This is going to add uniqueness to each bag as well, as they truly will be limited edition. We are going to print on a black background, with single colours.

I am so looking forward to this and feel so grateful to have amazing people like Hannah and Jessica around who offered me this collaboration!