Adventures in Yudu

*Ding*

"Round One! Ready.... FIGHT!"

Let's examine the process of YUDU screen-printing, shall we?


First we printed out our stencil. This took, oh, about THREE tries, due to our printer's refusal to cooperate. We decided to go for the heart instead of the rebel alliance symbol. I'm a little sad about it, but Sak thinks it's best to confuse as few people as possible.

(Not pictured are the steps we took to burn the stencil into the emulsion. Just follow the directions, and make sure everything is 100% dry!) We set the finished screen in the Yudu and taped down the parts we don't want to ink just yet.

Next, we flooded the screen with ink.

Then Sak scraped the design onto the fabric! We did a total of 6 passes with a Ralph's grocery card.

Lift the screen up, and here's the design! Not so bad, actually.

...But after it dried, the ink disappeared! Ah! Maybe we should use a different color?

We tried the main design with the an opaque white ink instead. Much better!

...But still not perfect. I think I used too many scrapes on these, as you can tell be the bleeding. We'll get there yet!

How much trial-and-error did you have to go through before achieving perfect results? Or did you end up changing your definition of perfect instead?

More Mon Madness

Weddings involve a lot of paper. And for all that paper, I think it's nice to have a good theme running throughout. Some popular and beautiful choices include damask, flowers, trees/leaves and pretty swirls and loopies.

Although I haven't exactly nailed down what kind of design we'll have, in the ever-constant quest to avoid over-feminizing, I'm sure it'll involve lots of black lines. Maybe like our Corelle tableware...


Ahh simplicity, how I love thee..





Anyway, I also thought of continuing the tie-in to Sak's mon..since it will already be everywhere, courtesy of our favors. And since we're already celebrating his heritage that way, why not celebrate mine too?
Disregarding the doodley scrawlings on the bottom, I came up with three more mons, two of which are completely made up! Can you tell which ones? Two for Saka, Two for me, and the double happiness bonding us in the middle.

Saka gets the Hibiscus, state flower of Hawaii, since that's where he's from. He also gets his family mon, obviously.

Penga gets the poppies, state flower of California, since that's where she's from. She also gets the peony, state flower of Indiana, since that's where her paternal roots come from. I'll have to vector these in, of course, before I go splotting them around on everything. I'm thinking for sure they'll go on the escort/place cards. They'll probably also make appearances on programs and other papery goodness. Saka thinks it would be fun to put the mon most appropriate for the person on the place card. So all the Saka's would get the Saka family mon, all the Californians would get poppies, etc. Maybe, but there might not be an even balance! Let's integrate, not label!

What's your papery theme? How does it represent you and your FI?

Forever Favor?

Description of Problem: The blue chairs at the Manoa ballroom don't match our black, red and white color scheme.

Alternatives:

1. Status quo
2. Rent or buy chair covers ($5/chair)
3. Use sashes and bows (doesn't truly cover the blue?)
4. Change our wedding colors to match the venue
5. Figure out something completely different

You can guess what I chose.

Chair cover wedding favors.

Oh, it's not as bad as it seems. Let me break it down -

Sak and I are budding environmentalists (living near San Francisco can do that to a person). We aren't total hippies yet, but we've started trending. We own a prius, shower with a bucket to catch extra water, and take our 30+ "green"- bags with us whenever we go shopping. (3 cents off at safeway for each bag you bring use!) That said, I knew we should have something useful for a favor. I had considered donations, or carbon credits, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe I'm crazy, but I love getting stuff at parties. Especially creative, fun stuff that can be used all the time.

If you type in 'green wedding favors' in a search, you might end up with a lot of 'tree sapling' favors. Which is an amazing idea, but not practical for a Hawaii destination wedding (Agriculture laws!)

So we'll be making "green"-bags. They won't actually be green, but probably black. I'd like to use eco-friendly fabric, if possible.

And these won't be just any old bags. They'll be bags made to fit on top of the chair. A chair-covering bag. Blue chairs, you shall haunt me no longer!

To make them festive, we'll print Saka's family crest (the Japanese word is 'mon') to the front of the bag, and probably put our names/date inside, where it's not as visible. That way guests will actually use them after the wedding. A Bible verse would also be nice, hidden somewhere In-N-Out Burger style.

Here's my print screen stencil trial run:

To do this I printed out the image, and traced it onto a sheet of thin plastic (actually the plastic from a cover report). I then used an xacto knife to cut out the image. This was extremely hard, and you can tell I didn't do that great of a job, based on the choppiness of some of the lines. Xacto knives don't exactly turn corners so well. And I cut myself once.

After I finished cutting out the image, I sprayed the back of the plastic sheet with sticky tack. This makes the template stick to the fabric. Usually, I'll place a piece of mesh over the template so the ink flows more evenly (no big globs), but I got lazy this time and just applied the ink (Speedball fabric ink) directly to the template with a spongy paint brush. Peel the template off, and voila!

Here's the story behind his mon. I think it's even more fitting that the plant it's based off of is a sustainable one.

The final product will probably be red or white ink on black bags, placed on the chairs and then tied with a pretty ribbon or sash. I'll have to find the dimensions of the chairs so I'll know how to sew it.

I'm contemplating buying a YUDU to mass produce my template. The one I made with plastic is pretty flimsy and probably won't hold up much longer. I've been pretty intrigued with the Yudu, after trying several other forms of cheap-silkscreen, like the embroidery hoop and modge podge method. I have yet to do real etching, but the yudu seemed like a hassle-free setup.

Anyone else come up with a multi-purpose favor? Or an eco-friendly favor?