Night market... night, market

It's not an evening market, but it's starting to feel like one - Designer Mart Temple Bar Saturday's from about 3pm are turning into a quest/competition to see who can find the best battery-powered lighting sources. I had a pretty good go at it this week, only issue being that my led lights were so bright, they actually come with a warning not to look at the light directly... so, how to light my stall without, a) burning the stall to a crisp, and b) burning my customers' retinas... all the origami has come into use here as I fashioned a tissue flower to cover the lights, giving a romantic glow...

however, next week will be less about making the table pretty, more about lighting so that the prints can be seen (ever the Libran, all style, no substance)!

two posts in one week..?!

                                 

Take that google-bots, two blog-posts in one week, amazin'! Anyway, I shan't delay as attempting to dry off after two days of soakage. Pics above are exclusively of The Printing Rooms. Delighted with the finished shop look, it really looks fantastic, and so say our new customers. Spent my first day sans siopa yesterday... and after a year of working non-stop, I literally didn't know what to do with myself... so I kept moving things, then moving them back. 

Now for some pics of the rest of the shop, and mostly you will see beautiful hats and fascinators from the lovely Laura Cassidy Design - she's becoming very popular with the good folk of Dun Laoghaire, and hopefully she's staying dry in there today! Don't forget to pop in and say hello, we're open Monday - Saturday, 10-6, Thursday 10-7, and Sunday 11-5. Opening eve 6-9 this Thursday. No excuses, map below - get on down, and don't be worrying about the rain, Ms. Cassidy has the cutest hand-made rain hats to keep the do nice and dry! We're only there for 5 weeks, so, as the ad goes when (they're) we're gone we're gone!!

   

STUDIO3 POP-UP - OPEN TODAY!

Quick update, really this time. Have been working on a pop-up for the last few months (hard slog!) and it's finally open today at 10am!! It's a really beautiful space and we were very lucky to have a visual merchandiser involved to set it up and make it look BOOTIFUL... and it does. Also involved in Studio3 is the fab Laura Cassidy Design.

I'm showing my newest prints, and my linen canvases and finally my first test hand-printed cushions. Any peeps around the Dun Laoghaire way, pop in our pop up (map below) and say aloha, ola, howya, dia dhuit... whatever you like. Oh, and opening night is Thursday 27th October, so after you've cast your vote for David Norris (weeellll, come on) then come over and grab a glass of wine.

Spud Printing Course in June

okokok, I've had it with promises... promises that I make and fail to keep, so *embarrassed cough* I'll just get on with this blog post without further apologies, and start with some nice pics.



It feels like a long long time ago (end of June), but my potato printing course is long overdue a mention. I've had many many lovely days since I started working for myself (Jan 2011), but I suppose this day was lovely in that it was surprising: how much I enjoyed it, how much I gained from it, and a boost I needed at the time (post-exhibition come-down and a reminder that I never did a blog re the exhibition... jeese). Had a really great bunch of students, who got some really great results, and whatever you might think of the humble potato printing, it's started me on the road to my new range of textiles. There is an awful lot of snobbery around some forms of printing, so I quite enjoy embracing these techniques... pure stubborness... and hope to surprise people with the results.


Hopefully I will have more classes in the future - there have been an awful lot of requests for lino printing classes, so when space and time permits, it's a definite plan in the making. In the meantime, if you are interested in future classes, email me and you'll be added to the growing list!

Apologies and new stuff to shout about!

Apologies to the google-bots that we've been away from our blog for so long. No excuses apart from being busy researching new products. So, sorries over, let's move on and quickly tell you about that.

Firstly, have spent the last month researching... the plan was always to move into textiles, and to expand the printing range. Having spent 7 years living in London, one grá I left with was for print: the design of print, pattern, and textiles (ultimate fantasy, had always imagined myself in a fancy, bright, trendy studio designing and making naive prints, with stockists lining up to buy... so that's totally come true.. ).

The love of textile print has always been buried deep somewhere, but when I started The Printing Rooms, I started with what I was familiar with... lino cuts. Moving into textiles was always going to be tricky, especially since I didn't know how to machine sew. So off I took myself to 3 sewing classes, and practise practise practise, et voila, new-found machine-sewing skills. With that, I have managed to create a range of hand-printed cushions. I didn't have the space/money to purchase a lot of screen-printint paraphenalia, so used what I had to hand. I made the ultimate recession-friendly print, using the humble spud (which reminds me, blog is due on the potato printing course I did back in June, when I fell in love with teaching!). See what you think of the results above and below. All are printed on linen unions, and cottons, all materials sourced here!

 

Flutter Clutter Cushions on whhite linen union

                                 

Exhibition preparation

Firstly, spare my spelling - it is 4.45am of an Easter Sunday and I suppose the low-lying stress levels will do this to a tired mind & body from time-to-time. In other words, I can't sleep, so thought I'd make the most of the time, by updating the blog, and watching the cat eat a very large black spider... saved me having to get a pot, cardboard over the top to chuck it out the window (the spider, not the cat).

Pic above is the invite that we emaield around for the exhibition. Really pleased with it. Didn't have a huge amount of time to spend on it, but it just came together quite quickly. It was a happy day of things coming together, including receiving notice that my press release hadn't just been lost in the ether, but had in fact landed in at least one press inbox. Hopefully I'll have a few media snippets to share with over the coming weeks.

Ah, the frames, the frames! My wonderful framer delivered my frames to me on Thursday. They are so beautifully made (he's a carpenter/joiner by trade) - very very pleased. Can (sort of) relax now... ha! Anyway, all the printing is done (may decide to do one further print - will certainly carve up the lino and see how we get on) but all in all, I have more prints then I had set out to do in the short space I had (was only asked to do the exhibition at beginning of March), and whilst the Gallery is a large space (nervous nervous), I think I should be ok.. watch this space!