My first week at my new placement at Coco Bloom! I was very excited to start my new placement and get a closer look into a print take on a small independent business. Although I had really enjoyed my time at story I realised it was important for me to move on and to also get a look into something a little different. Coco Bloom seemed perfect for this because all of the admin systems were exactly the same as Story but obviously the main focus was now on print rather than embellishment.
For my first day I headed to the studio to meet Lisa. She was accompanied by two other interns that were working with her. She informed me that the two girls Adrika and Arinka would be specialising in the print production side and that I was going to get a bit more of a well rounded view of all aspects of the business. Although I imagine I would enjoy the print side the most, I was happy that I would get to be seeing all of the elements again in this internship, as that was something I was very grateful for that I managed to do at Story.
We started the day by running through things in the print studio, this was exciting for me because it seemed so long since I had been in the one at uni! I explained to Lisa that we had only had quite a brief tutorial of things at university and that there were a lot of aspects of the print studio that I was unfamiliar with, but that I was willing to give everything a go and would love to learn! Lisa seemed quite understanding and happy with this and made it clear she was wanting to help us to learn.
We spent the morning blasting the screens, this was something I had never done before as it had been done for us at uni. Lisa mentioned to all of us that the way she taught was to show us once and then let us get on with it. I quite liked this straight forward approach and personally I always learn best by doing things myself.
We then got taught how to coat the screens and expose them. I almost felt a little embarrassed that I had never done these things before with being a second year ‘print’ student. I imagine that most employers would anticipate that I would already know these things and have done them multiple times. Obviously there was the pandemic that put a big stop to practical work, but I still felt as though I should have had a bit more experience than I did. But like I said, Lisa was very understanding of this.
We spent the rest of the day and Tuesday in the studio experimenting and printing. This was so great for me to really get some focused time in a print studio because I felt as though I’d never really had this before. I tried to be as loose as possible and just try things out and see what happened. I tried new techniques like monoprinting where I painted with dye directly onto the screen then transferred this onto the fabric. I also had a go at discharge printing where the fabric is lightened. I honestly had a really great time and really got into what I was making. I learnt that sometimes what you think is going to happen doesn’t, and that these things really do take time. I felt as though I got a lot less prints done than what I thought that I would. But I imagine that this comes with time.
The Wednesday Lisa told me to work from home as she had given me a considerable amount of samples that needed to be scanned in order to be uploaded to the website for clients to view. This was slightly tedious work that I can’t say that I learnt too much from but I understand that if I was going to have days like I had had on Monday and Tuesday in the print studio, there were going to be some days where I was going to have to do work that just needed to get done.