Quiet in terms of posting on here but not so still as the boys are on summer holidays for six and a half weeks! However, I have moved on a lot since school broke up – I collected my A4 screens, practiced printing fabric and even made a lampshade with it today – yippee!! I’ve been so excited I haven’t been sleeping well, but hopefully I can sleep soundly tonight now that I have a gilhoolie tulip lampshade sitting pretty in our front room.

Here’s what I did (I’m making an effort to give you more detail this time as I can’t blog as much right now and people have been asking what it all involves).

I changed the old gilhoolie tulip design as I decided it was too complicated and I wanted something a lot less fussy. I’m still planning to print with the butterfly and windmill designs but this is actually my favourite so far.

Here are the three silk screens I’m going to use to print with and the tulip fabric on my printing table (worked brilliantly, thank you James!) This is for our living room so I chose a coral colour to contrast with the duck egg blue walls (it was all looking a bit too blue and grey for my liking). I just need to find some small matching accessories to complete the scheme. Although I originally wanted to go for pastel shades I think the tulip and windmill patterns are more suited to bolder colours as the lines in the designs are quite fine. Lots to learn but the only way to come up with final designs I’m happy with is to experiment.

Then I used a strip of the fabric and a lampshade making kit and wham boom! (Bjork again) you have a gilhoolie tulip lampshade! That bit was easy really and the end result looks very professional so if you want to make your own lampshades give it a go.

I’m hoping to start printing and making lampshades, tea-towels and beanbags with screen-printed pockets from September for a shopping evening at school so my next task is to put together a business plan, how hard can it be?! Arrghh!