Block printing....finished samples and HOLIDAY!!

Good evening readers....I'm sat eating soup and making rice pudding.  Home made rice pub...happy days.  It reminds me on my great Auntie, who always made it really sweet and kept the skin on.  Wonder what she would have thought of me and my almond milk and agave syrup!  No idea how it will taste....if I'm not in work tomorrow you know it ended badly.

So, who saw my LLL show on Wednesday.  Block printing.  Seriously, this is cool. I met Jamie, the owner of Colouricious, when she came in to do a show on Hochanda.  I loved Jamie's work, and also her incredible story in relation to block printing and the village these works of art originate from.  The blocks are just beautiful.  They are a work of art in their own right.  All hand carved in India.  Each one is seeped in oil to help with easy cleaning, and also to prevent the wood from loosing the incredible detail.  These are a life time purchase, and obviously there's tons of things you can do with them.  I only had a little dabble - but I will definitely be doing more.  In fact, I'll be learning the skill of block printing, seeing the blocks being made, and much more, when I trot of to India, to the actual village the blocks are produced, next October.  And you can join me!!  It is a fantastic opportunity.  A real experience, both artistically and culturally.  We will be looked after, the hotel looks lovely, we have two meals a day provided.  We are taken on excursions, and we will also have some fantastic workshops.  If you would like to come along with me, then please follow this link:

https://colouriciousholidays.com/product/leonie-pujol-hochanda-block-printing-holiday/?wpam_id=6

As you can imagine I am ridiculously excited.  And don't panic, I'm not organising the actual holiday.  The lovely Jamie has done that - so we won't end up in Ramsbottom playing with lego blocks!

Okay, what did I do this week...this lot....


The blocks work on your gel press.  They give a nice sharp print, and you can also easily over print as well.  All of these were done only with the block printing













Cleaning your blocks is easy.  Just a bit of hot soapy water and a scrub, and your done. HOwever, before you do that, spritz them with water and just wipe off the excess paint, this way it doesn't dry on the block and ruin the detailed design before you have chance to scrub them.  I'm not a fan of the hundreds of baby wipes we use that end up in landfill, so how chuft was I when I realised if you clean your blocks with rice paper, you then have a fab background that you can stamp on, etc!  Suddenly cleaning became fun.



Rice paper is brilliant for using on awkward shaped objects, like this round box, as it goes round corners with ease.  I love this.  The various colors, and depth.  And thats just from cleaning ink off my board, and paint from my blocks, and then a little black block printing on the top. 







Of course block printing is known for it's use to create the most incredible fabric prints.  And it's easy.  I tried simple patterns on linen, organza and satin.  The paint Jamie uses is great quality.  It dries soft, so the fabric doesn't feel like it's actually been painted. 





This is another rice paper covered box.  Easy, but cool.  This time I added my paint to a water spritzer with water, and spritzed the rice paper.  It gives it a cool background.





On air, we had to pretend this was a cat, as we didn't have the cat stencils to work with, but how cool does it look using your blocks to stencil through the stencil.  I love the quality of the print as well, it's so crisp




Finally, using my Gelpress to create a cool background with the blocks, I then put my MDF shapes onto the Gelpress.  The print is lovely.  I then used my regular stamps to stamp over the top, which looks rather cool.






This is where the adventure begins, I am thrilled to have the chance to go to India, it's been something I have always wanted to do - but this is beyond what I thought possible.  And how fast does a year go by!  It'll fly by.......