Decals, Screen-prints and Frustration

I started a while back learning the process of decals and found Justin Rothshank’s website which provided a huge amount of information. Useful information which went from the start of the image process to the final product. Having found his website at the beginning of my decal journey to incorporating my own photography into my pottery I thought this was the norm for finding information on new processes.

That was a mistake on my part and a rather arrogant mindset that I should be able to find whatever information I needed without doing the work and testing to find if it fit my needs.

Starting with both a DVD and a book from well-known potters who create decals from ceramic underglazes I had a pretty good grasp of the process AFTER the screen print was created. This is
where my problems rose up. Neither the book nor the DVD explained in any detail how to prepare the image. No troubleshooting for my particular needs.

Now mind you, I’m still in the mindset at this point that the information should be easy to find if you just look and now that I’ve actually paid money for something to help me learn then they should be able to answer my questions. Frustration set in when messages on Facebook and emails went  unanswered. It didn’t matter that I didn’t even know the correct question to ask. I needed help and wanted it now. I was pretty cranky.

I started scouring all the screenprinting sites and YouTube video’s I could find and came across one small tutorial from wegraphics.net showing how to turn a photo into a screen printed graphic. That started my journey into what I needed to do to prepare one of my photographs for screen-printing.

I’m still just at the beginning of my journey but now have a clear goal in sight so it allowed me to
take a look at my expectations and see I was not really fair and the expectation of responding just because I purchased a book or DVD is not reasonable. Going to a workshop and asking those questions is reasonable and if either of the two potters has a workshop near my home I will guarantee I’ll do my best to get there!

In the next couple of weeks I’ll put some pictures together to share a little more detail in hopes that I
can pay it forward to make up for my greediness for knowledge and to help alleviate someone else going through the same frustrations I have experienced so far.

Am I Crazy?

In my last post on 7/13 I just spoke about how little time I had to post on my blog with part being due to our new puppy and the amount of time it takes to grow up. So what do I do? We add this to our pack:

 

 

So I will just have to get better at time management and take lots of advantage of naptimes!

I’m finished with the Fused Glass Pendants for now. Moving back to my clay which I’ve missed for the last year. Feeling pretty good about the recovery of a number of decals which had to be re-done after the WD Passport crash. I’m working on getting pictures processed and online on the Etsy store but here are just a few that I’m happy with.

 

 

It’s Been A While

Quite a bit has gone on in my life since Nov 2013. A new puppy was born Nov 2013 and came home to use 8 weeks later. New puppies take lots of time. 

From this:

To this:

To this:

Would not have traded this time for all the world.

The next year was spent mainly trying to recover from a major loss when I dropped my WD Passport. I know better than to not back things up. I work in technology and just kept putting off fixing the issue with the other Passport not backing up. Then I dropped it. Still haven’t recovered but got enough to focus on a few trophy donations, made some new decals.

Also found myself working and learning about fused glass. Ran a few tests to see if my decals would work on glass. They did. From there a lot of reading, a class at a local glass place and lots of supplies. These complement my pottery quite well so I’ll be continuing to work on them.