screens4printing news

New Categories & New Designs

           
                  POPPY 1                                   FLOWER 6                                   FLOWER 7

 
Now we are very familiar with all the designs in our design library, we decided that it was time to re-organise the categories to help you find just the right design for your purpose.
We have split out some categories - so Flora and Fauna have become 3 categories: FLowers & Foliage, Animals & Insects, Birds & Feathers. We have new categories such as Letters & Numbers as so many of you love text, which leaves texture as a category on its own.
We also have some old favourites that we have loved as screens - x-cross, seeds 1 - that we have put back in to the categories, together with some new flower designs.
Whislt we were doing all the work with the categories, we found a lot of designs had not been assigned a category so there may be designs that you have never found because they were only ever found under the banner of 'all products', and we have rationalised some of the anomalies of labelling so now everything is labelled with a number rather than a letter. So Bee A has become Bee 1. So if you do a search and cant find your favourite design, dont worry it will still be there - knock off the letter at the end and the search button will find it!

                                              
              DRY BRUSH 2                                    SUNBURST 1                                            SEEDS 1

Photo/Greyscale Custom Screens Page - Finally!

After discovering that our new thermal print system can produce beautiful greyscale prints, it took us a while to work out how best to offer this opportunity to our clients.
To give the best result, the print is done on a finer 120 mesh (our existing prints are done on a 70 mesh) and necessitates some extra settings and art work to ensure that the resulting print is not too dark. 
So it has taken us a while to get this on to the website, but finally we have. If you click on Custom Screens, either on the home page icon, or from the menu bar, you will get a choice of custom screens black & white - our normal screens, or custom screens photo/greyscale - our new screens.
We are hoping also to introduce some greyscale images to our Design Library - watch this space.
We hope you enjoy this new addition to Thermofax Screens - soon to be rebranded as screens4printing! 

New Large Screen Option

We have reviewed the current Iibrary designs and thought that some of them would be fabulous made larger! 
So you can now choose your favourite motif or texture and have it on a large screen. This works particularly well for changing scale on larger prints.

New Look for the Gallery

Sarah, Christina and myself (Christine) have been running the business now for several weeks and discussing how we might involve you, our customers, a little more.
We have seen some lovely designs being uploaded for custom screens and we constantly wonder how you are using these designs, and those from our stock library.
We have been selling a few christmas related screens recently so I guess there are a few cards being made!
We would love to see how you are using either your own thermal screens, or our stock images, so we are inviting you to be in our new look Gallery. You may see this invite on the FaceBook page, and on the bottom of your invoices.
Over the coming months we will be adding new images to the gallery to showcase thermal screen printing on all sorts of surfaces, for all sorts of purposes. So please do send us photographs and we will give you full credit on the website.
We will also be adding a few images of our own; things that we have made in the past using thermofax screens, such as this piece by me, using a dry brush screen for paper lamination purposes.
 

New Team

Left to Right - Sarah, Christina, Claire, Christine

It is the end of our first week and we have really enjoyed ourselves....making screens, processing orders, answering questions.
We owe a big thank you to Claire, who started Thermofax Screens from scratch over 10 years ago now. She grew the business into an exciting and thriving venture which we have now taken on.
The three of us spent last Saturday - handover day - working with Claire to change all the relevant details on paper work and website. I am sure there will still be the odd thing that we have missed, but we are getting there.
Thanks too, to everyone who enjoys working with the screens and we look forward to chatting with you via email, Facebook and soon on Instagram. 
We would also love to see some of the work that you have produced using Thermofax Screens - do use the contact page to upload a photo!

Christine
 

Gallery slideshow

It has taken us rather a long time but we have finally installed a gallery showing examples of thermofax printing. You can pause the slideshow to take a longer look by hovering the cursor over the picture and if you click on the gallery image, it will show you the screen that was used to create the print. 

Most of the examples shown are printed onto fabric as that is our background and it was through textiles that we were introduced to thermofax printing nearly 15 years ago. However, more and more of our customers are using the screens to print on very different surfaces including ceramics, glass and even cakes! There are so many possibilities and almost every week we learn of new ideas - it is wonderful to work with such a creative community.

A haven for the bees

When Thermofax Screens relocated at the end of last summer, the bees moved too! On the farm they used to live beside a very large pond and at this time of year, their main source of nectar was the golden yellow Rape in the fields that surrounded the hives. The honey they produced was very pale, with a delicate taste and set very quickly.

Now the bees have settled into their new home beside a smaller pond and there is a much wider range of plants for them to choose from (and no Rape for miles around) so we are curious to know what this year's honey will be like.

The gallery image has been printed on watercolour paper using two of our Ready-made screens - Beeswax 1 medium and Vintage Bee 1 mini and two inks - Black and Fool's gold (we mixed some of the black and gold together roughly to get the mottled effect on the beeswax print).

Spring at last!

Spring weather at last! It is very good to be working in the studio with the doors flung open, the sun streaming in and blackbirds singing loudly.  All of which makes summer feel much closer and I hope you like our gallery image of fabric printed with Birds 1 medium and a card printed with Birds 3 mini and Boat 1 mini.

All this is such a contrast to last month when lightning hit our neighbours' beloved beech tree taking with it our broadband supply for several days - not good for an online business! Fortunately only a very few orders were delayed - apologies if yours was one of them.  In the same week, totally unrelated but with astonishingly bad timing, the laptop died but our local Computer Shop came to the rescue in record time. We are still mourning the loss of the tree as it was very stately and provided dappled shade in our garden too, but everything else is back on track.

A refuge from the wet and windy weather!

The weather seems to dominate everything at the moment! Rain and wind (and even a few hours of snow) have lashed the new studio during January. Fortunately it is very sturdy and well insulated so I have been able to enjoy the spectacle from the lovely big windows.

I think this is the perfect time to get creative - the garden jobs can wait until the weather is a little kinder and there is nothing nicer than immersing yourself in some printing and/or dyeing and a bit of stitch ................. the occasional glance out of the window at the swaying trees and rain soaked ground will confirm you are in absolutely the best place!

Happy printing!