Some origami and some more printing

mono printed fabric, origami hexagon in white satin, bead, transparency transfer The transfer is the japanese character for 'folding'.

When I was printing on the tissue paper, I also tried some other surfaces that I had been going to do for a while.  And, yes, Judy, one of them was fusible, lol.  thanks.

This one was printing on light interfacing.  The main problem I had with this is that the rollers pulled the fibres off the surface and jammed the machine.  In the end, I had to fold a piece of tissue and fix it at the top, so the fibres didn't catch, and as you can see, I got a good print - missing the first inch or so of course.

 This one was on Tyvek and it worked extremely well.  The print was really sharp and clear.

This was on nappy liner, and although it looks as though it printed well, most of the ink went straight through and only a wer faint print remained.  This is just too thin!

This one was on fusible and printed really well.   This is one of the things I had been wanting to try for ages.
This picture also highlights something I learned whilst doing this.  The paper you use as a carrier does not have to be a full lenght.  you can see here, I have reused a piece of paper and it is shorter because I cut off the previously glued  bit at the top (which is now the bottom)

This one is on a polyester non woven (or light lutradur)  This tended to bleed a bit.  After I had done it, I remembered that it is better to coat it with some medium or PVA before you print to get a sharper print.  I'm pretty sure you told me that, Judy.  As you can see a lot of the ink went straight through - although this paper will make a nice distressed print for collaging.

This one is a heavy Lutradur and i didn't use a carrier for it.  It went through and printed well, except, where it had been folded in the packet, tended to pick up ink from the heads.  I will have to work out a way of getting the folds out, perhaps a warm iron with a bit of mist?  or pressing under some books.

The last one is tyvek paper, which also did not need a carrier.  It has a totally different texture to tyvek fabric and appears more like a very smooth lutradur, which has been pressed.  (Which it probably basically is as they are both polyester fibres.  Although the image was good, it did bleed a little.

So now, my poor printer has printed on just about everything over the last year!
As you can see, I have done most of my prints at around ATC size, so you will probably see many of these prints cropping up through the year.  I'm sure to manipulate them in unimaginable ways, so you might have too look hard to recognise them, lol.


“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” — Edward de Bono

A bit of ribbon and some tissue.

 Today I went to a meeting of ATASDA Vic (Australian textile art and surface design association),  so hi to any of you surfing the web.  We had a great day and had a silk paper demo from Elma who creates lichen inspired sculptures using crochet.  Fascinating
Today's ATC is decidedly floral

I used a piece of the collage background I made here.  The flower is some rolled organza and satin petals and the text is printed on a transparency.  bound with organza ribbon. 

I followed a link from Lisa's blog to that of an extraordinary artist, Marilyn rock.  I was inspired to create some stamped tissue papers like she showed in her video, but I decided instead to print on the tissue with my computer.

 As you can see, they printed quite well.  I actually used greaseproof or kitchen paper instead of tissue, but I'm sure if you ironed the tissue out flat it would work.  I just tend to use kitchen paper for layering tissue as it's cheap and works well.  The images I used were from  the graphics fairy.

I used a gluestick to glue the paper to the top of a piece of printer paper.  (I put an oversized piece of tisse paper on and trimmed it down after I glued it)
I found it ran through the printer quite easily.

And as you can see the print is excellent.  I can't wait to use these in collage.  I did find, however that the images bled if I used matte medium, but if I used neat white glue, this was minimised, But I will show more about this in a later post.

Thanks for the lovely comments yesterday.  As always, it is the supposed mistakes that people like the best, lol, but I appreciate them all the same.

Now, I need to get into my sketchbook because I have an idea for my balance challenge!


Have fun creating - and do it all the time!

Digital brushes tutorial

As I promised, here is a quick tute on using brushes in photoshop or photoshop elements.
You can get sets of brushes free from lots of sites on the net - just type for example, "leaf brushes"  in google.
You will have to sift through a bit for the free ones, but it's worth it in the end.  also, you will need to find the correct directory to put them in on your computer in program files, so that Photoshop elements can find them.
There are also plenty of tutes on making your own brushes if you feel like more computer time -lol

I use photoshop elements.
First I open a blank document.

Then I use the rectangle tool to fill the background with colour.  This is optional, you can work on a white background if you wish, or add colour when you create the new image.

Next, I create a new layer from the layer menu.  You don't have to do this either, it's just easier to remove a layer if you don't want it later, rather than trying to edit specific things out after the design has become complex.

Next select the brush tool and choose a set of brushes from the drop down box

Then choose a brush.  Once you have clicked on a brush, when you move the cursor over your background, the shape of the brush will be visible.  It will probably be too large for your liking.  It always is for me.  Use the menu bar at the top to alter the size.

Now wherever you click, your shape will appear.  I like to use the leaves one at a time, although you can play with the cursor and make ghost trails etc.  Remember the undo command and also if you have wrecked a whole layer, just delete it and create a fresh one.  Here's my first, very bright layer!

Now, you can create a new layer and add on top of this.  I chose a different brush, size and colour for this layer.

One of the things I find annoying is if all the shapes are oriented the same.  This is another reason for using layers. I can rotate only this layer using the rotate menu.

So you continue on, adding different brush layers,  in different colours and rotations.

The more layers the more complex the fabric or paper you print will be.

Now that's a nice Autumn sort of fabric.
Have fun playing with this, but remember, the fibre is the thing.  A computer is no substitute for some fabric paint and your own creativity.

Hopefully tomorrow, I'll have some fibre stuff for you.

Time to begin again

Well, that was a long time wasn't it?
It's not that I haven't been working, I have, but it has been so hard to get back into my routine.
Best thing is to just do it.
I have learnt, during this hiatus, that my blog helps me to remember what I am working on!!!  
And of course that was the reason I started it in the first place - as a journal.
So where today?
On Mondays, I will endeavour to blog about some mixed media, which shouldn't be very hard, since I have been doing a lot of it.

Digi Fabric

I consider digital imaging to be part of mixed media.  In my case, it is a tool I use in mixed media, either to create papers, or to create fabrics.
I have finally got the hang of using brushes in photoshop and have been making a little bit of fabric.
Here are three brush fabrics which I love.

This one uses leaves, which is my current theme.

This one uses lots of different butterflies.

This one uses lots of speckly distress brushes and is much more controllable than doing it yourself!
Here it is printed on fabric.

This print highlights one of the problems with printing, which I forgot to do and that is to increase the contrast and select vivid colours when printing.
Another thing which also helps is to remember to increase the yellow - even if it looks too much, because yellow can be so easily sucked up by the other colours.  You can see that the main difference between the two pictures is the anount of yellow - And my printer has not run out of it.

Hopefully tomorrow, I will give you a quick tutorial on how to create these textures.
Because Tuesday will be tutorial day!
It's good to be back.

Collagraph printing on fabric

This is a technique I have been dying to try since I read about it in "Mixed Media - New Studio Techniques".  Recently I saw a different version on Design Matters TV and I also read about it on an art site.
Basically, this technique uses the different properties of surfaces to create different values in the print.
Here's what I did.

 Here is a piece of stiff card, and some tape, masking tape and shiny tape. I have scribbled on the shiny tape so you can see it.

I have drawn a leaf - half on one tape and half on the other.  I then scored the tape with a scalpel, both around the outside and to make veins, which you can just see if you look carefully.

 I removed the tape outside the leaf as I will not be using it.  I did this on the other side too.

Now you can see the leaf.  I have drawn over the scored veins so you can see them.

 I transferred the tape pieces one by one to the piece of card and stuck them down firmly.

Next I painted over the whole thing with fabric paint.

Here it is with a coating of paint.

 Next I wiped off most of the paint.  You can see how the plain cardboard is the darkest, the masking tape is a little bit green and the shiny tape is white.

I covered this with a piece of damp fabric.

And rolled it very hard with my brayer (mostly people use a printing press or a pasta machine, but I don't have one....yet)

The resulting print appears very successful.....

But as you see in these two dried samples, the colour bleeds significantly and fades.  Probably because of the damp fabric with no fixative.

This one was done on dry fabric. It has more texture, which is promising and is sharper, but the contrast is too low.

Next, I added some textile medium to the paint.  This was a bit of a disaster.

Here I tried thickening the paint with Aloe vera gel.  The colour in the paint became too dilute although the image is slightly sharper.  It was more of a disaster.

In these two prints, I used fabric which had been soaked in alum, rather than water (then blotted).  This solved the bleeding problem, and had great texture, but I wanted more!  So I changed media.

This one used a shiva paintstick and the edges had really good definition.  The creamy paintstick stuck well to the edges of the tape, but did not really work on the background and wiped off both tapes evenly which was disappointing.
However, my cardboard was getting a bit damp, since I had been using water based media.  The cardboard was really too thin and needed to be sealed to use fabric paint.  It started to buckle, so I ironed it...and

It got even more buckled and melted some of the clear tape.  It is actually quite pretty and I might use it in a collage, but no good for printing any more....

So I made a new one with really thick card and two layers of the clear tape.   I also increased the size of the cracks between pieces.  You can see the different surfaces and how they hold the media very well in this picture.  The background, which is rough card, holds lots of colour, whilst the masking tape on the right holds a little colour and the clear tape holds no colour at all.  It is these different values of colour that I want to get in my print.

These two prints used soft, dry pastels.  I got both of them from the same plate and they have great line definition, but the fabric was not damp enough to pick up the colour from the open areas.  It was worth a try!
I tried oil pastel, but like the shiva sticks, there was little transfer.  Oil pastels are just too thick.

So, last of all, I used oil paint. This seemed to work better.  I was getting the background and the lines and a little bit of colour on the masking tape.  The darker print is the first and the lighter print is the second from the same plate.

This is my final print and it is getting very close to what I want.  I used my fingers and nails to scratch over the back surface of the fabric (I suppose that's cheating) and I liked the lines that produced.   I could use different things to create textures, the end of a dowel, a spoon, a knitting needle etc.
The masking tape did not retain much paint, but next time I will try some other textured tapes and things.
But before I do any more experimenting with this technique, I will make some sealed plates with lace and dried leaves and bit and pieces....and harass my other half to make the press for me.  (honest, he said he would - we already have the rollers), but failing that I will get a pasta machine.  I am sure the prints would be better with stronger even pressure.
When I make the sealed plates, I will post and I will also report on the fastness of the colours in this experiment.  I think it best to let the oil based media cure for at least a few days.

The more you make mistakes, the more you learn