Overview: Thea & Sami screenprinting workshop

Today, after anticipating it for many months, I finally got to attend my screenprinting workshop with Thea & Sami. Thea taught myself and four other lovely young ladies how to screenprint our own basic designs at home, and also gave us an brief overview of how her own commercial practice works.

To start, we all cut out our design ideas that we came along with, and then tried out printing them on calico. I printed the set of two apples on a small screen to start, and then moved on to the three pears on a larger screen.

I liked the paper outline that was left over from my first screen so much that I took it home to frame.

After perfecting our techniques, some us us printed on other items that we'd brought along. I printed up my designs on some of the tote bags I had laying around.

Now I have officially 'graduated'! And I also have a much greater appreciation to the level of skill and hard work that goes into Thea's practice. She really is a wonderwoman!

I also snuck in a little bit of retail therapy while I was at the studio, and picked up a few of Thea's beautiful tea towels that she had on sale due to some extremely minor imperfections. I LOVE them!

If anyone in Brisbane is keen to see how a real screenprinting studio operates, you're in luck! Next Saturday (30 October), Thea & Sami will be opening their doors to the public, and they'll be pulling out their super-sized screens for demonstrations. You'll also have the opportunity to pick up some clearance items at bargain prices. It sounds a little too dangerous to me!

If you're interested in taking one of Thea's classes for yourself, you can book on the Thea & Sami website. Places often fill months in advance, so make sure you get in early.

Home Decor Event: Bedroom and office

Today as part of the Being Tazim Home Décor Event, you can see an overview of our bedroom and office.

There are still two posts to come! The Home Décor Event runs until 24 October.

Home Décor Event: Introductory post and living room

My first two posts in the Being Tazim Home Décor Event are now live.

The first post is a brief introduction to the Flying Ducks blog and what I do — from interior decorating to cooking and craft. The second post is a before-and-after feature about our living areas. Many of you may already be familiar with a lot of this stuff, but newer readers who haven’t trawled back through the archives might enjoy this little overview. Here's a sneak peek of a few of the images I've included (which have appeared on Flying Ducks previously as well).

Keep and eye out tomorrow for a feature on the bedroom, as well as posts about the office, kitchen and bathroom to follow. You can also win prizes by commenting on many of the posts in the Home Décor Event. Thanks so much to Tazim for inviting me to participate!

Screenprinting workshop with Thea & Sami

This Saturday, I am privileged enough to be attending one of the extremely popular screenprinting classes of Thea & Sami! Thea is going to teach me and the four other participants how to print up our own basic designs on natural fabrics, and I’m very excited to have a go!


Over the last few weeks I’ve been browsing some royalty-free stock image website for inspiration, and I’m leaning towards a design in the vein of these vectors of apples and pears. My idea is to have an image of a whole apple with a cross-section sitting next to it, and the same for the pear design. I’ve coerced my lovely husband into drawing up my designs in the size I want so I can take them along with me on Saturday.

Images: Shutterstock

There have been some really great designs produced at previous workshops, and I'm hoping that mine turn out just as good!

In addition to printing on the supplied fabric (and perhaps even a tea towel or two!) in the class, I’m going to take along a whole heap of spare calico tote bags that I have laying around from when I started my hugely successful (sarcasm) Etsy store. Christmas presents ahoy! Perhaps if they turn out ok I’ll even think about having a little giveaway to celebrate…

New blog

In addition to keeping Flying Ducks running to record my adventures in home decorating and crafting, I've decided to launch another blog. This one will be slightly more serious and delve into matters of politics and general areas of interest for me. It will be mostly text-based, and I'll draw from my studies over the last seven years in many of the topics I discuss.

If this kind of thing is up your alley, head on over to my Kylie P Challenor blog for a peek now!

Home Decor Event schedule

Exciting news! Later this month, I'll be guest posting for the Being Tazim Home Decor Event. There are heaps of great bloggers taking part, and you can check out the schedule here. There will also be heaps of great prizes on offer.

I'll be starting off with an introductory post about Flying Ducks, and then giving a room-by-room tour of my home each day, complete with loads of pictures. I'll pop a link up each day to my guest post so you can all have a read!

Move ticket giveaway: The Loved Ones

Thanks to Madman Entertainment, I have quite a few (a lot, actually) double passes to give away to a preview screening of The Loved Ones - a 'modern, sexy, fun, relentlessly attacking pop-horror nightmare that takes the conventions of the genre then runs them off the rail'.

The screening is at Event Cinemas, Indooroopilly, next at 6.30pm Wednesday 13 October.

If you'd like a double pass, please leave a comment before 6.00pm this Thursday 7 October. I'll post the passes out before the weekend so they're received well before the screening. For more information about the movie, check out the Madman website.

Please note: This is not a sponsored post, and I have received no payment for running this giveaway.