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My Groupon Weekend

It's funny how I may sound like a Groupon fan here but I am not.  Well not really until this past weekend.  Ever since Groupon started here (3 years ago?), I have been looking out for their daily deals and buying random vouchers every once in a while.  It so happens that this weekend, I had two Groupon deals one after another.

Saturday - Photoshoot
I have never done any proper photoshoot before in my life.  Gabby who saw the deal excitedly asked if I wanted to join her and I thought it would be fun, why not?


And so it was.  I was told to be at Westfield Shepherd's Bush bright and early at 10.30am.  And considering I needed an hour to travel there, it was early for me.  The deal, GBP16, included a haircut, styling for the photoshoot, makeup, and the photoshoot itself.  What an amazing deal isn't it?  It was an experience.  We each brought 4 sets of clothes and even coordinated our out outfits - one black dress, two normal dresses and one summer outfit.  Yes we are that professional ;)


Really fun - we were asked to make certain poses and the photographer took both single and combined shots of us.  After 3h we were exhausted (who knew it could be this tiring?).


As part of the deal, we could take back one free print (A4 size) and I can't wait to get mine! 


Sunday - Screen Printing Class
I saw this deal a few weeks ago and knowing K likes art in general too, I bought a voucher for both of us for GBP36 - Two hour screen printing class with tea and cake.  The tea and cake bit was not quite what I envisioned but oh well, we didn't have much time to hang around with that much to do in two hours!

A brief background about screen printing from my knowledge.  It is an art technique where you stencil out the picture you want to print and thereafter you put this silk screen frame over it and scrap paint down with a "squeegie" to allow the paint to fill in the "gaps" of the stencil you created.  Once you remove the silk screen, you can then see the picture and allow the paint to dry, before you continue more layers of colours.  (In essence, it is a lot of work.  For a two hour class, we couldn't do anything fancy especially as amateurs!)  Andy Warhol is the father of pop art and screen printing.  If you know the famous Marilyn Monroe series and the Campbell soup series..


The class was a comfortable size of 8 people and the teacher was Juliana. We were asked to get inspiration from the books Julie had on the table, and lucky for me K picked up a book with good pictures I could get inspirations from.  Err, more like I could copy from.  I saw a silhouette of a woman and I liked it immediately.  Boy, copying that out isn't easy.  K, on the other hand loves animals and drew his favourite eagle.  haha so cute.  We were back at school, heads down and concentrating on drawing and then cutting out the bits which we wanted to be coloured.  Finally I could start the printing process and I got really excited.


My artwork in process... first the black, then the red.

Tada! Got the red lips and bangle in, ooh so happy with the result!


K hard at work

 

K and his eagle!  Haha forced him to pose with his artwork.
I thought it's rather Che Guevara-ish with the colours he chose but he insisted it's not;
"they are the colours of the German flag

The finished products



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