The process of producing the finished paper and cards was arduous. Firstly for some idiotic reason I believed that using an A3 screen to create a repeated design would be easier than one large design. This was at a point where I was unsure whether to use continuous rolls or sheets of paper, and I believed that (though on reflection if I had used either it would've made sense to use an A2 or A1 screen). It was only when I started printing, using sheets that I realised how much work I had made for myself. Firstly I discovered a problem with 'ghosting', when printing on a single sheet and moving the design along to print again the ink from the previous pull would stick to the screen and cause a half tone ghosting look so I scrapped those sheets and started over.
Second problem. To combat ghosting I would leave each sheet to dry before printing the next section, this took up a tremendous amount of time, each sheet required six pulls and caused the screen to block occasionally wasting more time. Time however wasn't the biggest issue, alignment was, each sheet took so long to align that the screen would block up. The alignment had to be done by hand, six times for each sheet and ended up producing really unprofessional looking products with mis matched printing and patchy looking outlines. Also the following day three of my screens had been taken despite still being within date. After this I chose to re-expose new A2 screens and start over once again.
Finally I managed to produce finished designs. Though I did have to pull 4 times for the robin design and six times for the mistletoe design the final products were completed over three days with the matching cards (which were a breeze in comparison) produced in half a day. The final designs weren't 100% perfect but they still contained all the character I had wanted them to printed on recycled brown paper and card as I had wanted them to.
The whole printing experience brought home how much I still have to learn about screen printing and that no one is ever 100% perfect with the process. There will always be mistakes, and if you want to produce 30 sheets of wrapping paper bring 50 pieces of paper just in case.
