Screen Printing with Sarah Waterhouse

One of Sarah's beautiful prints, available in her Etsy Shop.

Sarah Waterhouse, for those that don't know, is a genius screen printer based in sunny Sheffield.

As you can see her work is absolutely beautiful, she is part of the great talent these shores have to offer, and on Saturday I was lucky enough to spend the day screen printing in her terrific studio, along with 4 other ladies. 
I can't remember when I heard about Sarah originally, probably through Etsy, but I do recall being bowled over by the cool British style of this lady. She has some really fresh prints including Bird Brolly, these fab Suitcases, and my personal favourite, traditional English Insults- which always make me chuckle. 
 
So when I heard a few months back she was offering a days screen printing through her Crowdfunder bid, I was keen to get involved.  Sarah reached her total, and now has her large printing table making it easier to do bigger print runs, and develop her flourishing business.   

My star print- looks rather festive, maybe a table runner? Photo by S Waterhouse

The actual day involved us cutting a freezer paper stencil (As many as we could make!), and then after a working lunch (no-one wanted to stop) we got to practice the actual printing process, followed by a final print to make a lampshade.  Now some of the ladies made fantastically detailed stencils, one lady in particular created the most amazing street stencil with buses, houses and cars, I massively admired her patience, and the result was great.  I decided to keep it more simple, mainly because I really wanted to try my hand at the printing, and practice the actual process a few times, but also because I'm impatient and a bit of a scaredy cat!

My Honeycomb and Triangle Print. Photo by S Waterhouse

 I ended the day with several fun prints to work with, and a lampshade, so a pretty good haul overall.   

Drying my Lampshade print.  Photo by S Waterhouse

And although I wished I had a slightly more complex pattern for the lampshade, I really enjoyed the process and would love to have another go at some point- well actually I DO have some freezer paper, and Sarah did suggest making up our own screens at home was reasonably straightforward, watch out kitchen table, here I come! ; )

New lampshade getting lots of use.

And for anyone who missed the links earlier, you can see Sarah's post about the day here, and tale a look at all of the other terrific prints the ladies completed, and the beautiful items in her Etsy shop can be seen here.

Ange : )