Tutton and Young - Made for Ukraine

I screen printed a finished edition of twenty 'Blue and Yellow Sunflowers' using hand cut stencils and just two colours. They are printed on A4 size 300gsm white Snowden cartridge paper and the colours are lovely and bright. But I was a bit nervous about trying to sell all the prints for charity on my own. Very luckily Tutton and Young decided to organise 'Made for Ukraine' on Instagram and they put a call out for makers to participate by selling or auctioning work in aid of the Disaster Emergency Committee's Ukraine appeal. I was glad to be able to participate in the week long online event alongside fifty other makers! The event started on Monday the 14th of March and by Tuesday evening my edition of twenty sunflower screen prints had all sold out and raised £500 for the DEC! The prints sold so well I decided to screen print a small second edition of ten 'Blue and Yellow Sunflowers'. They have almost all sold and so far raised about £750 in total. I'm really hoping this will help people fleeing the devastating war in Ukraine. The news has been so distressing and I think we all need something positive to hope for.

Blue and Yellow Sunflowers for Ukraine

I've been working out how to screen print my sunflower design using hand cut stencils and just two colours; the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag... or at least what Google told me they are! I redrew my sunflower design so it had a background similar to the flag. Next I carefully hand cut a stencil for each of the two colours. Then I screen printed the blue background including some of the details like the petals and leaves. Finally I added a layer of yellow and where the two colours overlapped they created green. There were some problems printing the little sunflower seeds so I needed to make some slight changes. But apart from that the sunflowers worked well and I decided to screen print a finished edition to sell to help raise money for charities working in Ukraine. The wonderful culture, traditions and folk art of Ukraine often inspires my work so I wanted to show some support and solidarity for the Ukrainian people.