18 transparencies, all printed out & ready to go. Now I just need to sit down with some scissors & tape and piece them all together to burn the screen.



But not until tomorrow. So far I am spending my week waiting for things to dry. I may not have a print done by the end of the week, but I'm determined to have one screen ready at least.

My screens have been waterproofed, I have a board and black paper cut & ready to fit in the screens, and the transparencies arrived in the mail. Of course, as soon as I start printing out a few, I run out of ink! But, cross your fingers, I think there will be printing next week. For now, I bring you more ambigrams.

"Aldaz" Ambigram	"Respect" & "Loyalty" Ambigram
"Noble Union" Ambigram	"Magic" Ambigram
"Markus" & "Sabrina" Ambigram	"Markus" & "Sabrina" Ambigram
"Love" & "Life" Ambigram

While we were visiting for Father's Day, I snagged the photos I'd taken with my mother-in-law's Rebel back on Mother's Day. Here are some of my favorite shots from her garden.








(Don't worry, he's a teeny little guy.)

I've also been tossing around a few more names for the paisley pattern....
Paisley Plethora
Persnickety Paisley
Paisley Parade
Paisley Promenade

So many options! I need to just pick something and stick with it ;)

You may remember the paisley pattern I posted last month. As soon as I 'finished' it, I realized that I had set the measurements based on the size of the too-small screens that I already had, figuring I would have to make do with those. I couldn't simply re-size it for my new screens, the ratio was all off.

So, I had to pull the thing apart and get back to work on it, fixing the repeat and filling in a lot of empty area. But, I think I like the result even better, and now it is all ready to print 1/4 yard at a time like I wanted from the start. To get a size of scale, the image below will be about a full yard.



But I still can't settle on a name! I thought I had made a decision, but then my mind flits to other options. Here are a few I've been pondering today...

Poll #1420517
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which do you prefer?

I'd like to stick with the alliteration to give the names a theme, but perhaps I need to drop the 'paisley' idea. I hate naming things!

I forgot to mention that I am now the happy owner of my own Remebering the Kanji! We were actually able to trade in a bunch of Starbucks gift cards of Justin's (neither of us drink coffee) at Plastic Jungle for some Amazon credit. The book arrived Thursday and I've been studying like crazy. (Justin is worried about me) ;)

For a little update on my progress since Christmas ~ The free online sample of RtK, which I had gone through before, goes up to kanji #276. Now I've nearly doubled that amount at about #475. I want to get through the other 1500+ kanji as quick as possible, so until it's done I'm going to hold off on learning new vocabulary and just review the sentences I've already learned. So far I've learned about 375 sentences, each of those with one or two new vocabulary words. Of course, other than that, I still can't understand a darn thing.

I know a few other girls were interested in starting, or maybe had already been learning some Japanese. How is it going? I'd love to hear updates.

Woohoo! Yesterday we went to pick up my new, custom built screens. The abnormally large cat doesn't really give you a good size of scale, they are pretty large at 27" x 31". And they ended up being about $7 less per screen than the original quote, $20 less overall. I wasn't going to question it!

Now I need to pick up a giant pack of printable transparencies, some nice varnish to waterproof the wood, and some black posterboard to help block the light before I can burn the patterns on the new screens. This week we might need to spend more time preparing for Father's Day and a wedding than screen printing, but it's one step closer!

I've had a lot of non-ambigram requests lately. The hearts have been pretty popular!

"KJF" Daisy Design (The initials KJF are hidden in the leaves & stem)	"E&K" Heart Design
"C&V" Heart Design	"TWM" Heart Design
"Simply Martine" Design Created as a logo for a perfume company.

I'm still a bit in shock about all of the orders and emails that have been pouring in this week & last. For this week I have 10 orders to create, when my ideal number is 5. Mondays are usually my busiest emailing day since I stopped answering them during the weekend, but this morning was a new record. I had about a dozen emails about brand new orders, and just about as many from current customers or people still working out the details.

Hopefully things will slow down a little in the coming weeks, because in a few days I'll be placing an order for my new large & lovely screens! But for now I'm sweltering in the workroom, which is always the hottest room in the house. Moving didn't even fix that! Cold, crispy grapes anyone?

I can't believe I let almost two weeks slip by without a post!

My camera is partially to blame for the absence, because it now seems to be incapable of taking any close-up shots, no matter the setting. I've had to throw out most of my recent photos because of it. I'm hoping for the best, but this could be a big problem if it keeps up.

After a few slow weeks of orders, I've suddenly been bombarded with an insane number of emails. I expected ambigrams to get a little more popular with the release of the Angels & Demons movie (the book is what introduced most people to ambigrams), but the week after the release was completely dead. Things certainly seem to be picking up now, though!

And luckily I have the extra time, because I'm going to be on a screen printing hiatus for a while. I have four more screens left from the pack of 6 that ended up being too small. I've used two of the screens, divided in half, for the smaller prints you've seen around the blog. The tiny size was fine for learning how to burn and print the patterns, but it's way too much work to keep trying to print at that size. I was planning on moving up to the full screens for the rest, making do with the wrong size the best I could, but then I realized...

After I burn those screens with 4 patterns, it will be time to buy more. And once I have the larger size I thought I was buying to begin with, I'll want to move all of those patterns over to the larger size too. So instead of ending up with 4 wasted smaller screens, I'm going to try to sell them and put the money towards the larger size. Finding boxes the right size for shipping them has been impossible, and it looks like I'll either have to build some myself, or else give Craigslist a try (I've never sold on there before so I'd love some info and/or advice).

Unfortunately, there is quite a price jump between the sizes, and after hours & hours of research, I realized I really need them to be a few inches bigger than I had originally planned, and I need to get the screens custom made for the size I want. I found someone about half an hour away who can make them for me, as many or few as I want, so I won't have to deal with ordering 6 at once or paying insane shipping fees, but they will still cost twice as much as my current ones.

I am making a little progress at least. Let me introduce you to my new gigantic squeegee!



This thing is 22" long and *huge*. It's so big, it seems to be begging for a name like 'Excalibur', or something similar. Notice how much bigger it is than my current screens? Add another inch to each end, and that will be the width of the new ones.

You might notice a trend with this post. Each customer ordered two designs ~

"Izabela" & "Boogie" Ambigram	"Ashley" & "Margo" Ambigram
"Gaudet" & "Devine" Ambigram	"Arnold" & "Overturf" Ambigram
"Jordi" & "Anne" Ambigram	"Jordi" & "Anne" Heart Design

I wanted to get together a few photos of items made with my fabrics, and coin pouches seemed like the perfect way to use up those little scraps I was starting to accumulate. And, a perfect time for another tutorial!

The pattern is something I made up for this project, just a simple way to put together a small zippered pouch. It's nothing fancy, but something you can easily stitch together in about 30 minutes, and a great way to use up those small pieces of fabric. (The finished pouch is about 4" x 3.25")



( Click here to see the step-by-step )

I'm so excited! Yesterday I finally put the finishing touches on the paisley pattern I've been working on & off on for what... two months? I can't believe it took so long!! But, I usually end up spending my free-time at work with printing, not much time for new patterns. And as you can see, this pattern is pretty intense! (For an idea of the scale, this image is most of a yard)



Once again, I can't decide on a name. I'm kind of leaning towards "Whimsy" or "Peculiar Paisley". The second is a little too similar to the "Curious Curl" damask, but that might be a good thing. I don't mind the idea of (most of) the prints having a similar theme for their names. It makes it easier for me to come up with something, and gives them a unifying element. The names of the animal prints have their own theme, though I'm not sure if anyone has picked up on it yet. ;)

Now, this print won't be available as fabric until the summer, when we get things set up for the larger screens. Can you believe summer break is only a few weeks away?

My mother-in-law's garden was in full bloom for Mother's Day...









My battery ended up dying pretty quickly and I took over her Canon Rebel for the rest of the day, snapping photos until I couldn't see straight. I started to really enjoy using the manual focus for macro shots and got a lot of fun pics, but I won't be able to get my hands on those photos until our next visit.

Last week I used up the rest of the fabric for a few more owls. I had planned on using this turquoise & gray combination with the Skeleton Key print, but can't seem to print the owls fast enough.

We went to a lovely wedding this weekend, for one of my cousins, and I took a *ton* of photos. Unfortunately, my camera is crap, and hardly anything turned out. Sure, on the little camera screen a few of them looked brilliant, and I couldn't wait to get home to see them on the computer screen.

We were busy with church and Mother's Day festivities the rest of the weekend, so I just had a chance to sit down and pull up the pics. Only a few of the outdoor shots were salvageable, and I was indoors most of the time, so all of the bride & groom photos were pathetic.









Luckily everyone was snapping pictures there, so this really was no big loss. But as I'm getting more into photography, it was quite depressing to flip through the photos & see everything turn out so badly. And blaming my camera will get me nowhere until we can afford to replace it with a newer model, which will be no time soon.

Oh well! We really did have an excellent weekend, and I hope all of you enjoyed your Mother's Day as well.

I recently realized that it has been quite a while since I posted some food shots around here. We really do cook almost every night, but a lot of it is recipes I've posted here before, or simple things that aren't really worthy of a picture/recipe. We even tried out a batch of new recipes, but nothing really excited me. I might revisit a few of those meals, but they will need a lot of tweaking before they are ready to share.

One thing we've finally got the hang of is our bamboo steamer. Line the trays with parchment paper, pop two pieces of fish on the bottom tier with a little lemon pepper, some green beans or broccoli in the top tier with a drizzle of italian dressing, and let steam for 15 minutes. A super quick & easy meal!



Just make sure to run the steamer for a good 2-3 hours before you use it the first time, or else the food will taste awful woody. I'm so glad to finally figure that out, and now the steamer is getting some use after years of sitting on the shelf.