Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day everyone! This past year my own father turned the big 50. For his birthday my siblings, mother, and I put our heads together to create a birthday event like no other to celebrate the occasion. Here's what we came up with...

My family is full of athletes, and my Dad has always been very involved in our sports careers. All of the Connolly's (including Mom and Dad) who have walked through the Weymouth High School doors, have been on the track and cross country teams. I can't remember my Dad ever missing one of our meets. When we ran cross country, he made the home meets extra fun by parking his car in the middle of the course and blasting music to pump us up as we ran by! It wasn't just my siblings who appreciated my father's support at our sporting events, he cheered on our teammates just as hard and they appreciated (and still do for my siblings competing in college sports) his presence at the meets and games too. 

So back to the party planning... for his 50th birthday we decided to put together a road race at the cross country course in his honor. We invited friends and family and track and cross country runners from our high school and college years to participate. The race went off without a hitch and we all had a great day. What does this all have to do with my creative soul, you ask? Well, I designed the T-shirts for the event! Our high school mascot was the Wildcat, so I wanted to include that in the design. I tried out a few options...

When I design shirts I like to see how it might look before printing, so I tested out my designs in photoshop...

Here's the final design. Just enough claw, just enough Super Fan!

We all proudly wore our shirts at the race. Here's my family, full of past, present, and future track and cross country runners! 

Race Day Photo courtesy of Sean McPherson at Fast Focus Photography

And, just as further proof of my Dad's dedication, check out his little league blog sonsbaseball.blogspot.com. He coached this team when the eldest 2 of my brothers played little league, and now he's coaching my youngest brother playing his first year. Hats off to Dad!!

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Fish Shirts

This is a project that I did last year, but with t-shirt weather upon us (aside from this cold rainy week we're having) I thought it might be a good time to remind everyone how to make your own printed T. A few summers ago, my younger brother and cousins came up with this Fish logo... 

Logo Design by Steven Connolly. All Rights Reserved.

They were drawing their logo everywhere, and on everything. They had even painted it on their skimboards (I'll have to remember to keep them in mind for the 'Creative Friends' series and show off their work)! When they wanted to further represent "Fish" on the beaches, they recruited me to whip up some T-shirts for them.

I got to work making them a screen. You may want to check out this other screen printing TUTORIAL I did for more detailed instructions on how to make the screen itself.

When using screen printing ink don't forget to place newspaper or cardboard between your shirt so that the ink doesn't seep through to the other side.

Apply the ink over the screen consistently, and don't skimp!

Once the ink is applied, pull your screen off the fabric and hang your shirt to dry!

I repeated this process multiple times with various colors using the same screen! Just rinse the ink off and dry the screen in between each use. I've found that a hair dryer really speeds up the drying process.

After about an hour I had my own little gallery of Fish shirts. They looked pretty good once they were all done, but they looked even better when the kids wore them to the beach!

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Bikini Makeover

This project started out as a fib...

Every summer my friends and I go to see the band 311 when they come around and we all get together at a friends house for some poolside pre-show fun. Since some (read: most) of these friends are die hard 311 fans, I decided to inform them (read: fib) that I would be sure to arrive wearing my best 311 bathing suit. I thought there must be a way for me to get my hands on such a suit, but to my dismay one did not exist. When life does not hand me what I want, I make it...

First thing I did was buy a black suit. This one had some extra flair that I needed to get rid of in order to see my vision through, but luckily I was able to recycle even further and use the pieces for a separate project. See Project Here

Top (obvi)

bottom (obvi)

Next I created a screen that I would use to print on my suit. The top design is the 311 logo and the bottom one is the 311 logo plus a little sunset scene that I added for some summery pizzaz.

 Next I tested my prints on paper to make sure they were good to go before printing the final piece. (Props to my little brothers for the beautiful plaster-fun-time creations that I use as paper weights)

 After I removed the skull beading and tassels from the bathing suit I added my own beads for a more appropriate look. Then I printed my screen on my suit, let it dry overnight, and just like that my fib was absolved as I arrived at the pool in my new 311 bikini.

Rock on!

T-Shirts

Today felt like a good day to show off an old project. Here are some t-shirts that I screen printed last summer using the same technique I used to design the Saco Pinnes that I showed before.

Since I have a small obsession with Octopi and it's symbolism in music, (the octopi's 8 arms symbolize the ability to reach out to a lot of people - just like is done with music - awesome right?) I definitely wanted to include those two subjects in my first t-shirt design. This shirt is for the band the Dirty Heads (check them out, they're amazing). The Dirty Heads actually have their own octopus that they use in their designs, but I wanted to create my own. Here's the result.

Another small small (read: huge) obsession I have is the need to incessantly reference obscure kids movies from the 90s. But what better subject matter for a t-shirt design!? If you don't recognize this stud, it's Rufio from Hook along with his catch phrase "Bangerang".

 Bangerang Johnny!

Another movie I find myself referencing all to often is Heavyweights. I couldn't resist displaying Tony Perkis' face, along with a quote from one of my favorite scenes, on a t-shirt. Nobody's seen more butts than you Uncle Tony.

Jumping back a few decades, this is a screen print I did of the lovely Billie Holiday. You really can't go wrong with Lady Day. Fine and Mellow

Saco Pinnies

Last summer I learned a fairly cheap way to do custom screen printing. Each screen is made with a crocheting hoop, screen material, and mod podge. When my friends asked for some custom printed pinnies to wear on our annual trip to the Saco River, this is the technique I used.


First you want to draw or print your design so that you can trace it onto the screen later. Here is the Saco logo that I designed. (croakies and oars have proved to be vital when navigating the mighty Saco)

Next  stretch the screen material within the hoop and tighten it as much as possible. Then glue around the edges with the mod podge to keep it in place. After that dries trace your design onto the screen. Fill in the entire negative space with mod podge and let it dry. IMPORTANT: whatever is covered with the glue will NOT print. Where there is NO GLUE the ink will pass through the screen and onto your shirt.

From there you just place your screen on whatever you're going to print on and make sure to weigh it down so that nothing shifts. Using screen printing ink, paint over your screen using a foam brush. This process took quite a while with the pinnies because each screen had multiple names on it so I had to make sure that no ink spread beyond the one name that I was printing, and then the screens had to be washed and dried in between each print. Also each pinnie had a print on the front and two on the back (names and numbers) and the shirts had to dry overnight between each print!

Here are some pictures of the end result...