we feel fine book winner...

three cheers to the winner of our we feel fine book giveaway, mr. brian sikorski of wonderful time photography! it seems random.org wanted to see his flaming middle finger just as much as we did, and brian was nice enough to oblige with a photo!

still bummed you didn't win? it's ok, you can still order a copy!

we feel fine book giveaway!

ok real quick cuz i gots to go make dinner -

the folks at we feel fine were kind enough to bestow on me a second free copy of the "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion" book so that i might do a giveaway for all the rest of y'alls - and giveaway time is here! my second copy came in the mail today. whut whut!!!

SO! here's the rules:

1) i got in the book after the folks at we feel fine found a lovely blog post i had written featuring my middle finger. so to enter the contest, leave a comment here telling us something middle-finger related. it could be about the time you accidentally flipped off your aunt mildred, it could be about the time you did it on purpose. but in celebration of my middle finger picture, your comment MUST share something about middle fingers! maybe you know of a cool piece of middle finger art on the internets? share it and automatically be entered to win!

2) comment as many times as you wish, but one entry per person will be counted.

3) contest closes at midnight on sunday, december 13, at which point i'll use the website random.org to pick the winner!

the winner gets a free hardbound copy of "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion", and if you like i'll autograph my middle finger on page 82 for ya!

get commenting people, i can't wait to read your middle finger stories!

all kinds of fun news!

i am chock full of art news today!

yesterday i found out that my art school savannah college of art and design was looking for people that went there to contribute paintings for an upcoming project. so i email the gent, and send him to the paintings section of my etsy shop. he wrote back telling me that my flipping bird painting would be perfect and could i get it out to new york by next tuesday?



um, yes please thank you! even more so when i asked for more details about the project. apparently, scad's working on revamping studio 54 and will be styling a dressing room for an upcoming carrie fisher 1 woman show. and my painting will be in her dressing room.

my painting.

will be in her dressing room.

carrie fisher.

there's talk that hgtv will be covering this project and that us weekly, usa today and other press outlets have made inquiries, and that is awesome. but i'm completely bowled over by it being for CARRIE EFFING FISHER!!!

want a little piece of hearts and laserbeams history? prints of this painting are available!



in other exciting news, my candy corn party fabric design is part of this week's spoonflower halloween contest - i am currently getting my butt kicked by another cute design so please PLEASE consider a vote for hearts and laserbeams! if i win there'll be a great big sale to celebrate!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair

ok so i figured i'd do another high school reading list selection this time, and i went to the barnes and noble classics section at uh... my local barnes and noble to see if anything caught my eye and dragged me fifteen feet. ended up walkin out with the jungle - wasn't sure i'd wanna read it, cuz from what i knew about it, there's some pretty graphic nasty talk about how our meat used to be handled back in the day. but then i read how this book was a milestone in american history, and that because of this book the pure food and drug act was passed. so i thought i'd give it a go - make sure you read to the end to see how to get my copy of the jungle and the cliff notes for it for free so you can read it for yourself!



hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair



dude did you ever see the snl skits about debbie downer? like there's a big group of happy people hanging out and they're talking about cool stuff and then debbie downer pipes up with some shit like "I'll tell you what the Pilgrims did bring: smallpox."



seriously, that's what this whole book is. it's a big fat huge debbie downer. it pretty much made me wanna kill myself in a lot of parts. (not really. but it DID make me want to drink)



so basically the jungle is not all about the meatpacking industry - that's a tiny part of it that really only takes up a couple chapters of the 400 pages. the overall story is there's this poor lithuanian family who comes to america in the early 1900s to make a better life for themselves.



and they get crapped on over and over and over and over and over. by the end of the book, a couple of em are dead, one of em's run off and abandoned the family, the kids are all effed up, one of the family's a morphine-addicted ho, the list goes ON AND ON.



you just keep reading about how crappy everything is, how everything's a swindle, everyone's out to rip everyone else off, everything's a lie,and holy crap guys this book was super depressing. cuz we are jerks!!!



and then i got to the last few chapters of the book and had lots and lots and lots of problems finishing the book because it was all politics. you know how i am about politics - SNORE!!! i honestly couldn't really tell you much about it except for the fact that the main dude jurgis finds out about socialism and it solves all his problems the end!



say it with me now - WHAAAAAAAAAAAA???



so as i'm reading the cliff notes on this thing, it turns out the jungle is only partly about the meat-packing district and all the bad tuberculosis infested meat being churned out back in the day. the entire book is about how capitalism stinks, and how it fucks up everyone that isn't top dog and how it's all corrupt, and how awesome socialism is.



and upton sinclair was a socialist! and he ran for governor in california as a socialist a couple of times!



WHAT THE EFF!!! how come i never heard about this part of the book? (if i'd have known it was all about politics i would've just rolled over and taken a nap instead) apparently when the book came out mr sinclair the social socialist was pretty upset because the whole socialist slant of the book was lost in the OMG WHAT THE EFF ARE THEY DOING OVER THERE IN THE MEATPACKING PLANTS!!!



so basically, here's the book in one sentence: the jungle isn't so much about bad meat as it is about bad politics. it's pretty riveting though, and until i got to the last 3 chapters that were all about socialism it was pretty much a page turner!



ratings:

hearts: 3 hearts - this wasn't my favorite book to read, it was pretty depressing and the last 3 chapters could be lovingly called "boring as all hell"

farts: 2 farts - it was actually pretty good, didn't so much like reading about diseased meat and REALLY didn't like reading about politics.



and there you have it! wanna check out the jungle for yourself? i'm givin away my copy along with the cliff notes to the first person to comment about this blog post! be quick, though - i post my blog on 5 different sites so the first one from any of them wins!

winner winner chicken dinner!

thanks to the awesomeness of random.org, the winners for the screenprinted tee and greeting card giveaway have been picked!

congrats to kb of kokoleo for winning an awesome tee, and to dao for winning a greeting card!

there's gonna be lots more giveaways in the coming weeks so stay tuned! (i may have a quickie one coming up later today even for you book lovers out there!)

the voodoo that yudu so well - part 2: all the screens that're fit to print! AND A GIVEAWAY!

now that we've covered how to burn screens with the yudu, i'm gonna share my experiences today in printing a big ol pile of shirts for an order i'm putting together for shopscad in savannah, georgia! there's a lot of info to cover, but if you can hold on til the end i'll tell ya about a fun giveaway we're gonna do!

first up you start with a big ol pile of shirts and a few fabulously burned screens!



you'll wanna iron your shirts before printing on em so there's no weird wrinkles in the design, fyi be advised!



first of you'll need to prepare the screen by taping off all the areas you don't want ink to get through. i use ordinary 3m blue painters tape for masking off stuff because it's not super sticky and comes off really clean when you need to take the tape off. also, notice that i burn more than one image onto a screen - thisll save you a ton of money in the long run - figure a yudu screen is 25 bucks - if you put 4 designs onto 2 screens you've effectively saved yourself 50 bucks! such a smart shopper! you can use vellum, plastic, acetate, or heavy paper to block off designs you don't want to be part of your current printing. i use vellum. so if you wanna be awesome... uh... use vellum?



i would also totally recommend springing for yudu's better squeegee. it just feels better with printing. i'm willing to bet if you already do screenprinting you've got a squeegee you like and i'll be honest with you that shit will work. it won't make the yudu blowup! so relax!

money saving tip: i think the yudu means well with their platens you can buy a bunch of and adhesive sheets, but for my one-color printing uses i find it kind of unnecessary. i left the protective sheet on top of the platen's adhesive and i don't put the platen inside the tee when i print. rather, i put a piece of cardboard inside the tee and set it on the platen and print away. here's some info on lining up your images:



see that dark shape behind the "i pushed" text? i put a piece of tape on the platen to mark where the top of the artwork is.



then i jot down on the tape the measurement info on what points i want the tee to line up to to have proper placement. if you're only doing one color stuff, the registration isn't super important at all - if you're planning on doing more than one color, definitely look into the yudu's registration sheets and whatnot...



get your bead of ink across the top of the design and get to printin!



it's a good idea to test print a couple of times on paper beforehand to make sure everything's gonna go to plan...



money saving tip: you'll need to put ink at the top of the design again with almost every pulling of the print - if you look at your squeegee you've probably got a lot of excess on there that you can scrape off with a popsicle stick and put across the top of the design instead of using another bead of ink from the bottle!



and POW! before you know it, you're done printing your first tee!



and POW POW!!! before you know it, you're done printing a whole mess of tees! one of the things i love about the yudu is it really really helps me production-time-wise. printing tons of shirts used to take forever, but i did 60 tees in 6 hours today! that includes printing, stamping a logo inside at the neck and heat setting each tee individually. you really can't beat that!



i ran into a tiny problem with another screen of mine - the transparency was too high up on the emulsion when i exposed the screen, and part of the apostrophe got cut off!



no worries though, i busted out a tiny paintbrush and the yudu's screen blocking stuff and fixed it right up! i will tell you i think i may try speedball brand's screenblocking fluid in the future, because the yudu's seemed to wash out when i cleaned the screen later...



if you have a larger tee design, it may be good to put a bead of ink across the top of the art, and then another bead of ink across the middle just in case!

potential problem alert! ok i did find one thing with the yudu that was giving me some issues this morning. it seems like some screens don't wanna stay on their pegs and they shift slightly. you don't believe me? here's proof!



it's really not a huge deal for me because i do all one-color desigsn for now. BUT - i kept getting subtle double fingers from my neil diamond screen! maybe it's too close to the edge of the emulsion? i dunno!





printing these neil diamond tees i can now tell you the 2oz bottle you receive with your yudu machine will be enough for about 16 large graphics. if you're using it for tiny graphics you'll get more for the money...

but what would be even better for the money is using a different brand of screenprinting inks... i kept reading everywhere that you are really only supposed to use yudu brand inks with this system. but they're so flipping expensive! i started thinking about how i've always used speedball fabric screenprinting inks, and how they're water soluabe just like the yudu inks... and then this happened:



and i felt like i should probably give it a try and report back!



and survey says DING DING DING! the tees i did with speedball ink turned out just as good AND rinsed out of the screen just fine at the end! hooray!

ok so if you're using more than one design on a screen, how do you line up the bottom image when you wanna print it?



i do the same thing as with the top graphic - i put a piece of tape to mark the top of the artwork -



and then i measure out where i want the shirt to line up in comparison with that top of the artwork. make sure this piece of tape is long enough so you can se it on the side of your tee when you're placing it on top of the platen!



here's my classic steph's screenprinting pose! if you press your left arm down on the end of the screen and really lean into your print as you're pulling the squeegee across you'll get a nice amount of pressure and a crisp clear print. i like to pull my squeegee across twice so it's nice and dark!



check it out! i effing love this glue gun design and i've been wanting to burn a screen of this for ages - if you like it make sure you read to the end of this novel-length post for info on an awesome giveaway!

once i did one of those glue gun tees, i wanted to print that graphic on EVERYTHING! i'm not one for texty tees so i put tape over the words on the back of the screen and slapped that design on one of my sweatshirts!



and then i went for the yoga mat!





but due to the texture of the mat and the thin quality of the speedball ink i used, the design came out really smudged on the yoga mat. i recommend on highly textured non-clothes stuff it may be better to use the yudu inks cuz they're a lot thicker.



and all that smudging went up on the back of the screen, too - something i didn't think about until i tried screenprinting a pillowcase with the glue gun design...


(i still kinda like it though!)

and THEN i put it on a tee using the yudu gold metallic ink! i don't know if speedball has a shiny gold and silver fabric ink but if they don't the yudu brand is totally worth it!



and THEN i made some of these notecards! i think they'd be fun invitations if you're planning a crafty party night a your house - or if you're in a craft mafia chapter (like me!) and you're inviting new members to join they'd also be super cute!



and THEN i screenprinted my dog! i think it turned out pretty good, check it out:



and that about does it for my adventures with the yudu today! it's time to talk CONTEST! first place gets the kelly green "get made" tshirt pictured in this blog post - i only have one available right now in an american apparel unisex size small, so if you don't wear that size and you win you can maybe give it to a friend or bake it into a pie! second place gets a turquoise "get made" greeting card!

here's how it works - this'll be a random drawing, and there's a few different ways to get chances to win, and you can participate in more than one of these to get extra chances:

1) comment about this blog post!

2) twitter a link to this blog post and send me the link as proof

3) post a link to this entry on your blog and send me a link as proof

4) write a haiku about screenprinting in the comments of this post

5) share a link to this blog post on facebook or myspace and send me a link as proof

you've got until friday may 15th at midnight so get cracking and have fun! winner will be chosen from random drawing and will be notified via email! GOOD LUCK!

my finished poster entry...

just uploaded my entry in the flight of the conchords poster design contest; cross your fingers for me! there's some really great designs on the site!

whoop whoop! shop news!!

hey folks, two things that you simply must know!

1) if you're cosidering placing an order for that special someone for valentine's day, you besssst get crackin! it's comin up on saturday, don't you know, and you need to order by tuesday night to make sure your goodies get there in time! don't forget to let me know if you'd like a special gift message enclosed!

all orders placed before tuesday night will ship us postal service priority mail wednesday morning and that should be enough time to get anywhere in the continental u.s. of a by saturday!

2) this one's a biggie! from now on hearts and laserbeams will ship your order worldwide for FREE!!! wowee wow wow!!

3) my sister danielle told me today she got the dream internship she was tryin for, with the kevin and bean morning show on kroq - you should tune in on tuesdays and thursdays starting next week cuz you might get to hear her from time to time! and she's awesome! congrats danielle!

4) i almost never stop at 2 things when i have 2 things to tell people, the end!

5) odd numbers always make for stronger layouts so let's end on five. i'm working on a poster design for the flight of the conchords poster contest - will be sleepin on it tonight and revisiting tomorrow, and if i still heart it i'll share it with you!

please vote hearts and laserbeams! pretty please??

hey there folks!

have you heard of spoonflower? it's a great new website that lets you design and print your own fabric!

every week they have a fabric design contest, and my hearty plaid pictured above is in the running this week! the winner's fabric is available through spoonflower's etsy site for a week after voting closes - buying this design directly from them means you'd be able to get this fabric $4 cheaper than when ordering through my own site!

so please - take a visit to their polls and show some steph calvert of hearts and laserbeams love; if i win there'll be a big fatty sale to celebrate! i think it's possibly a vote once per day kind of situation - if you'd be so kind as to vote as much as you can that would be superrad!

thanks so much for the support, have a great week!
steph

you can be a winner at the game of life!

pow! i came in fourth in craftsters' "craft your resolution" contest! thanks to all that voted! you can read all about it here.

aaaaaaaaand what else. i have 2 more days in the office next week before i'm officially a full-time hearts and laserbeams employee! freelancing and artsy fartsy adventures, here i come!

oh and kraft mac n cheese may just be the tastiest of all tasty dinners!

i've rearranged and added a couple of things on here; nothing too major, whaddaya think?

free postcard set contest!

ok i'm upping the ante - if you're the first person to put that pitch video from sesame street on youtube and send me the link, i'll send you a free set of postcards from hearts and laserbeams! you could also win if you find the video pre-existing on youtube and just tell me where it's at. here's the scene you're looking for...

**********

text comes up on the screen, saying how some tv execs are creating a revolutionary new show for kids. fades to a board room scene, with muppets sitting all around it dressed in suits. the one at the head of the table says something to the effect of "how about we call it the itty bitty kiddy show?" another muppet pipes up "it's all about learning letters and numbers and all that, how about we call it the nitty gritty itty bitty kiddy show?"

text comes up on the screen saying "they just couldn't agree on what to call it"

it goes back to the boardroom, obviously hours later - a pile of papers on the table, some crumbled up, all the muppet execs look haggard from being in this meeting all day. one of em slumped at the table straightens up and says, very tiredly, "hey. these kids that are watching the show... they can't read or say their numbers or anything, right?" the other muppets agree. he continues, very slowly and deliberately, "why don't we call it 'HEY, STOOPID'." kermit pipes up, "you really think they'll put that on the air?"

**********

aaaaaaand scene!!! if you can find that on the internets and share with the rest of us, or put it on youtube yourself, be the first one to do it and i'll send you a free set of postcards! because i die every time i even think about it.