Shipping matted prints

Getting flat boxes of a specific size isn't so easy, as it turns out. I managed to get an assortment today from Utrech's, Art Media, and Pearl Framing, mostly boxes that papers and sheets of glass are shipped in. I needed something slightly bigger than 16"x20", and all I could get were 30"x40".

Anyhow, due to the shoutout from L&TM5K, one of his many readers surfed to my web site, checked out the new The Store page, and bought a print! The Mysterious Gift Horse! So a flat box was suddenly necessary. (I'm not complaining, you of the many M5K's, but you're the Real Thang, we know that.)

With a box cutter and enough packing tape, you could make a box of any size, probably. So I was able to pack up the print in a more or less appropriately sized box. And it looks pretty darn sturdy too.

Most of the day was spent in town. First, there was the "jury duty" at Print Arts (to jury in new members), then it was off to get tickets for the Marchel Khalife concert, which is almost sold out, so I was glad to be able to get the tickets. In between, I ran an errand for Print Arts, and went around looking for boxes.

And the day is done, just like that.

The money day

I discovered today that the credit union had put my hard earned money from Portland Open Studios weekend into someone else's account! Isn't that special. Well, at least they took care of it pretty quickly. Then it was picking up money from Jeremy for the sale of the 2 violin pieces back in the summer (the buyer only just now paid up), and also giving Jeremy his money for helping me during Portland Open Studios (I pay my help during those weekends). What was funny was that I gave him just a little more (rounded up), and he gave me just a little more, and we pretty much cancelled each other out.

Packed and shipped off the books for the Bainbridge Island book show; packed up the different states of the Trixie print for Marcy, who's doing a display for Print Arts Northwest. Started to pull together some testimonial entries for the Portland Open Studios blog. Debra Carus responded very quickly and with a very positive note, so that's up as the first testimonial entry.

Experimental gocco print, day 1

With this print, I'm refining some of the techniques I first tried with Fatherland, and also trying some new techniques.

First shot: This was a used screen -- the yellow screen from the Dentistry print (a cmyk print). You can see the screen is still stained from the process yellow, but the screen is clean. I used white paper tape to block out an area 3+" x 7" and inked up with a custom mixed yellow and some of the pastel yellow straight out of the tube. And in this case, I put the ink on rather thinly because I wanted the unpredictable drop outs. This is just an under layer.



The resulting print:



Getting ready to print the next layer. This screen was also a used screen, but it's a completely open screen, ie, I flashed it with a solid black copy. I used this for many of the background shapes in Fatherland; you can still sort of see the shapes. Here I've blocked out the borders:



I just drew circles with the ink out of the tube; this is one of the techniques I've been meaning to try. Here's the screen in the gocco:



Then I cleaned it up. And in this case, since the screen is completely open, I do use Windex to clean it (no worries about pin holes), so it's completely degreased and ready to be used again. Then I used white paper tape to block out another area, and drew ovals with the ink out of the tube, in orange:



This last shot was something that I hadn't tried before, and in fact, just thought of as I was doing this -- I smeared ink on the screen with a rubber spatula. The ink is very thin, and I could only print 5-6 prints before I had to re-ink it. But here's one print:



Tomorrow, I will layer over the left side where the magenta, orange, and red areas are. These are just there to create the texture for the under layer. At least that's the idea. We'll see how it works tomorrow.

Bought a coil binding machine on ebay today. The project I'm proposing to do with the kids at the Q Center involves them each printing a page and then the class making a coil bound book from all the printed pages. Plus I can use it too, of course.

Moping around (& part III of 'what I like about myself')

That's NOT the part I like about myself.

I was wrapping up the grant application today (there was the online part, which was due last Wed, and then there's all this paper work that I now have to produce, due this coming week), and discovered that the presentation portion of the project must also happen in the same grant year! And the only exhibit I had already lined up, and was listed in the application, was for the year after! Arrgh! I do have a library exhibit lined up now for end of 2008 (same grant year), but it didn't happen by last Wed. And not only that, in one of my answers, I used 2 carriage returns! (They specifically say to not use any CR's.)

So I'm DOOMED. And I'm probably marked as having 'poor grantsmanship.' They keep track of you, too. Now I'll have to change my name and move to another county under some artist protection program...

Well, all of this brings us to Part III of What I Like About Myself. Drum roll please...

10. I don't mope around for too long...really. Truly. Actually, my original entry for this was going to say "I don't waste too much time on regrets, worrying about what-might-have-beens and what-should-have beens." And it's true, for the most part. I learn my lesson, I hope, and move on. Some mistakes take a little longer to get past, but eventually I do.

OK, moving on...thanks to Gretchin, my Lovely Assistant for the gocco class, I have some photos from those 3 days. Here's a shot of the exchange that happened at the end of the class. The assignment was to make an oversized print on the B6 Print Gocco, ie, a print that is larger than the print bed size. They had different options on how to achieve that though, and some people chose to do very tight registration, while others played it pretty loose. Someone made a scroll; a couple of people made accordion books (one put hardcovers on hers too, and gocco-printed the cover paper).



On other fronts -- did a little work for Portland Open Studios blog, and reviewed documents for Print Arts Northwest. Tomorrow, I'm off to Bend.

Last day of flowers site for 10 days

I've got to start working full time on getting the RACC grant proposal done, and also preparing for the OCAC class, so today's my last day on the web site until after Aug 15. Every page is stubbed in, and all the galleries have something in it. All are just placeholders, and to see how much space we have, how big the image can be, and how much text she can put in. Here's a look.

Got drafted into the Print Council's membership committee, and there was a meeting tonight, so that took up the evening. It was a fun meeting, and I came away with 2 small jobs to do (they were inline with what I was already investigating, so no hardship). I am getting behind on the Portland Open Studios blog though; will need to deal with that tomorrow.

Got into the Books.07 show in Australia (yay), so will need to pack up a copy of Calypso tomorrow. Due on the 20th. They didn't give us a lot of time to pack and ship. Just got my acceptance letter yesterday.

I actually had a couple of fun pictures to show today, but now I'm just too exhausted to get them off my phone...time for bed.