Things We Love Thursday: Mumble Tease
Contributed by Emma Callin
When the weather is gray, dull and depressing, I find a bright colour or a fun print in my outfit lifts my mood significantly - even if it's something as small and seemingly insignificant as rainbow-coloured hearts on my socks! It's no surprise then, that I have a drawer full of t-shirts with unique prints and patterns; great pieces by themselves on a warm day but wonderful for layering in the colder months too.
I'm especially fond of the designs from Mumble Tease, created by local Calgarian artist Heather Reinhardt. Those who have browsed the stalls at Park Sale or the Festival of Crafts may already be familiar with her unique, imaginative and down-right adorable work. If you need something to put a smile on your face on a cold, dark, winter morning, her shirts will do that! She paid us a visit with some of her favourite designs for us to show you.
I'm especially fond of the designs from Mumble Tease, created by local Calgarian artist Heather Reinhardt. Those who have browsed the stalls at Park Sale or the Festival of Crafts may already be familiar with her unique, imaginative and down-right adorable work. If you need something to put a smile on your face on a cold, dark, winter morning, her shirts will do that! She paid us a visit with some of her favourite designs for us to show you.
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Heather is wearing Sleep is for the Birds t-shirt, Micah is wearing Sprouting Brain, I am wearing Love is Sticky v-neck t-shirt
How did you come up with the name "Mumble Tease"?
"It actually took quite a while to come up with Mumble Tease. I did a lot of brainstorming and wrote down hundreds of words and combination of words, but eventually this option stood out more and more. "Mumble" is a neat sounding word in itself, but also, I tend to mumble quite a bit, so it was fitting. And then I like to tease people and thought it was a neat play on words, you know, tees, tease… And so, Mumble Tease it was! I'm still super happy with the choice and glad I spent so much time getting it just right."
What inspires your designs?
"All of my designs begin as doodles in one of my many sketchbooks. When I draw, I usually don't have anything particular in mind, but prefer to put down a few random lines or shapes and then use my imagination and see what that turns into. So the drawings end up feeling like an extension of my sub-conscious self. The designs very much reflect my own unique personality and whimsical sense of humour."
How do you make your clothing?
"The designs begin with a doodle. I flip through my sketchbooks and choose which of the hundreds of drawings will be printed next. To silk-screen the design on the shirt, I use a bit of a different method than most screen-printers. Instead of using a light-sensitive chemical that hardens to get the image on the screen, I cut my designs out of a thin sheet of clear plastic by hand with an x-acto knife, producing a stencil that I then tape to the backs of my screens."
"For the multiple colour prints, each ink colour gets its own stencil and screen, and is printed separately, requiring care in set-up to make sure the colours line up correctly. It's quite the process, but they sure look neat! So in short, I do all the drawing, designing, cutting of stencils, the silk-screening itself, and then the heat-setting of the inks. Lots of work and love goes into each shirt!"
Which design is your favourite?
Oh, that is a hard question!! And the answer is always changing! Often it's one of the newest designs, like at the moment I really love the "Hotpot" design, because the print really stayed true to the original drawing, it's the largest print I've ever done, and I just really like his expression. One shirt that's an older one, but always remains a favourite is the "Bear/Goat Split." There's the front half of a bear-like creature on the front, and then it just switches to the front half of a goat on the back! So it's a two-headed, no ended creature! Awesome!
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