I began the morning helping her with some Christmas orders, we unpacked her giftware and began printing the designs upon them using the heat press machine ...at early stages of her making she used screen printing but reverted to this method as it produced more products much quicker, was assured to work well and produce good quality each time.
The process she uses...
She began by printing the design onto special transfer process, trimming the excess and positioning it on the fabric- in this case an eco shopper bag, once in position the heat press handle was swung around to align the top half of the heat press above the design.
Once the handle was pushed down the timer began for 10seconds and lifted once alarm sounded- allowing enough time for the image to be fused to the fabric.
The backing paper must be then peeled off almost immediately after, to reveal the heat pressed design beneath.
I later was able to experiment with her printing technique and created my own garnments as christmas gifts, using her artwork and then experiementing with the materials and creating my own designs.
She discovered a studio space was available through the university and was able to afford the rent due to the funding she recieved- the personal area she has is quite a limited space however is currently big enough for her needs and provides a shared area to meet clients and board room for meetings. Kim said that she prefers to work in her own space but the fact that the studio is an open plan space with sectioned off areas allows quite a communitive space. Prefers that the studio isnt isolated, shes around other creatives and is able to bounce ideas off one other.
She has her own website, folksy shop and can be found on twitter- the photographs of products for her shop were taken by a professional photographer at her studio.
I really enjoyed the day spent at her studio and felt that at some point in the future (not immediately after graduation) i'd like to have my own studio space, somewhere i could produce my own artwork.
