Holiday Club Screenprint Workshop

Holiday Club screenprinting bags with kids, originally uploaded by Helen Rawlinson.

A printathon, bags galore, then t-shirts the following week. Just something I've been doing over the hols! See them all on my Flickr

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, originally uploaded by Helen Rawlinson.

A busy day at Holiday Club. Halloween is such a no nonsense theme that the kids get it straight away. A few pumpkins/cats/witches/skulls and such, dotted about and they go crazy. I have to get a bit bossy about the colours or they all end up black!
I was a bit more slap dash this time..a year on from my first official workshop..but I'm really happy with the results. Children are just the best in terms of one liners, inspiration and energy. So the odd pushy comment, moan about waiting and ink going everywhere, slipped off my back this time, not that I've got much of a back left after all this lot!

Summer Print Workshop. Holiday Club.

This was the print of the day for me. I just love it!
Hand drawn and cut by Zoe, age 6.
This workshop was a tough one, right from the start. Stanley wasn't having it that his mum was next door playing with the big kids so he proceeded to come in and sabotage all the craft stuff on the periphery. Failing that it was full blown screaming!
The first 6 all wanted to do Arsenal in red.
Then "can we do bags instead?"
But by the afternoon, it was all running smoothly. Thanks to my little helpers, we had a fair number of adorable tee shirts printed and drying on the jam packed washing lines.
Each time I swear I won't do it again. Then you get a little cat like this, a very cheerful bunch of kids and happy as can be parents at the end of the day and I'm already thinking about what to do next time!

Catch the rest in my Flickr set.

Workshops for Kids

Well I've just had another exhilarating afternoon at Stanley's Nursery.  This time I was invited back to do a Workshop for the Holiday Club during half term.  The age range was from 5 to 11 so it was a pretty varied bunch, but they all did a brilliant job.  I'd already done a day there with Stanley's group.  That time it was kept very simple and we based it on Autumn leaves.  I did a bit of prep work beforehand and photocopied loads of leaves of varying shapes and sizes.  The days leading up to it, the key workers got the children involved with cutting out the leaf shapes so that when I came in there was a nice selection box of leaves.  They all chose their own and made a little collage on their bags, then one by one I got them all to print.  We had a red, blue and green team and amazingly we managed to print 20 bags in one morning session.  Stanley, 'the pro', was first in line to print of course, but then disappeared off to play, which was good news.

 

This time we chose Halloween as it seemed the most appropriate subject matter for kids of all ages in the lead up to the 31st.  Plus you could get a very similar effect to hollowing out and carving a pumpkin face with cutting out a 2D stencil for a bag.  As before, I did some photocopying and drawing of the most obvious themes and had a couple of 'mood boards' up from images I'd grabbed off the internet.  This was really just to get the kids inspired to do their own drawings.  Even though there's a signature with everyone's cutting out skills anyway, I hoped that they could expand on my initial ideas.  They really went for it!  Quite a bit of cutting out was done before I arrived so we could get straight at the printing.

I was in the main room this time, which was pretty full on, with kids flying here there and everywhere, tons of questions and a bit of juggling with turn taking, but it was just nice to be in such a lively enthusiastic atmosphere. The staff were so helpful and supportive and I felt like a very welcome guest as well as immediately being part of the team. Thanks to Kim and Marie Anna, all the prep work was brilliant and gave the whole thing an instant take off.  Loads of boys joined in as well as the girls and all the 'watch this it's magic' and 'wow look at that' responses, really made me smile.

I have an aching back and twinging knees, but it was well worth it!

Happy Halloween!

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