Transfers and tinkering

I am much better today.  Unfortunately when I get stressed, my back sometimes plays up.  At least when it is stress, it get better as soon as I relax and get rest!
today's ATC is a bit imperfect.

I used a bit too much gel with my transfer and it bled into the fabric a bit, oops.
Cotton cat theme fabric, transparency transfer, wooden cat shaped button, perle thread.  This reminds me of my cat, who is afraid of anything, including a wisp of air and especially, the main culprit,

Thumper, the bunny, who chases her around the house! (The cat has learned to move around the house from one high place to another, lol)

Now on to some stuff.  I said yesterday that Tony had pulled some electrical stuff apart for me.  I am collecting little bits to make some (very) mixed media collages.
Here is my desk this morning!!!

This deconstructing of things to use them is a very messy business, perhaps it should be called messy media in my case instead of mixed media
Here are a few of the items which I have collected and intend to use on these pieces.

These are the chips out of computers.  originally, I just wanted to decorate the square and rectangular tops as central motifs, but when they came out I turned them over and there were all these tiny pins, which made me think of weaving patterns with thread on them (or wire)

These things are all called heat sinks.  I suppose they are to stop things getting to hot when the electricity goes through.  But I love the shapes and patterns on them.  Colour is not really an issue as the colours you see here are just skin deep and I can make them any colour I want, but I really love the pink tree shaped one!

On the left are two reflective disks from cd rom drives.  I can't wait to stitch them down.  The circles at the top right are faces from computers fans.  and the beautiful coils at the bottom were in the battery compartment of an old tape player.  I love spirals.

I have a big collection of these fan blades.  I think they will fit in very well in a garden collage after a bit of painting and embellishing.

Now, these, were some very conservative heat sinks which I almost didn't keep, but I decided the holes might be useful for adding interesting stitching to.

These are some of my favourite bits.  They are sets of coils from motors and fans and are like little flowers with beautiful metallic petals.  They are all different sizes and numbers of spokes and colours.  The two silver things were holding one of the coils in place, and I liked them, too.

Last, but not least, this is my pride and joy and will be the centrepiece in a collage one day.  It is a set of coils, like the ones just above, but it is from an old 5 and a 1/4  floppy disk drive (think 1980 type computers!)  I hate to think how many of these drives I have turfed over the years!

Anyway, you can see what madness my husband and I get up to when we work together, can't you?  I don't know whether I'm a bad influence on him, or he is a bad influence on me, but we certainly get up to no good with old junk.  I do love making something from stuff that is junk to any other house in town, lol.

now that I have got all that madness off my chest, will we get back to "normal" stuff tomorrow? - you will have to see.

Remember, one person's trash is another person's treasure, or perhaps should we say anyone's trash is an artist's treasure?

a bit of tulle and Transfers

 today's ATC is HOT

 

Abstract cotton fabric on heavy stabiliser.  Decorative yarn trapped under tulle with free motion scribbling. yarn couched on the edge

Now, an update on the fabric transfers I was doing last week.

This transfer (of a dover copyright free image) was done on very high count cotton using an acetate overhead transparency (not a printer transparency)  When you print this way, the ink does not soak into the transparency, but just sits on top of the sheet.
My fabric had been moistened thoroughly, but was not dripping.  I made sure there was no water sitting on top by wiping it.
I carefully placed the transparency face down onto the damp fabric and without moving it, pressed all over with a brayer (I used the brayer, but  I have found that it is not as good as using your hands)
If you look carefully,  you can see down the centre of the picture, there is a pale streak.  The brayer did not make good contact here, so that is why I find using your hands is more successful.
another point to make here is that there was a little bleeding with just water.  If you look carefully at the edges, you will see that they are a bit wobbly.  Also, if the fabric is too wet, this will happen, so there isis a bit of balance to it.

This transfer was done using an Alum solution to wet the fabric. (I use a saturated solution, which means no more alum will dissolve in it.  It is available at chemists, but you might have to order it.)
As you can see, I was still using the brayer here, but the edges are much clearer and the image is much more defined.
Imagine my surprise, when searching on the internet, to find this method being used by a printmaker!
This is a very complicated image, so these results are pretty good.  The main points are:

• use an overhead transparency, or a thin piece of acetate (the flexible sort, not stiff) cut to size for your printer.
• prepare your fabric (damp, but not wet) before printing, I find placing an absorbent piece of paper under it helps with this)
•  Don't disturb the ink on the acetate before transferring it
• use an alum solution for slightly clearer prints
• I heat fixed my prints when still wet, but I actually found that they did not bleed if left to dry and appeared sharper
• use your hands to smooth the transparency and transfer the print

Obviously, this process will differ with different inkjet printers as they all have different feed mechanisms and inks.(don't use a lazer or photocopier for this method)

One of the main advantages of this method is that it is very cheap.

• after transfer, simply wipe the acetate clean and reuse
• you can get a reasonable print with water

a bit of a daisy and some transfer experiments

This atc is made from a bit of the Pam carriker collage I showed a few posts ago.  The daisy is molding paste painted gold.  I have added a few beads to the centre and blanket stitched the edge.


I have been fiddling a bit with transparency transfers since reading about using hand sanitiser gel in pam carriker's book.  I works really well.

The tranfer (on to fabric) on the left is with sanitiser gel, and worked really well, despite my awful pictures.  I wondered if it was the gel, so I tried some aloe vera gel, and it worked, but it bled a little (right)
This gor me thinking, so I looked at the ingredients list on my sanitiser bottle.  There was alcohol, glycerin and eucalyptus.  I happened to have all these things, so I did some experiments.

For this transfer, I mixed up my own concoction of glycerin, methylated spirits, eucalyptus, water and a bit of aloe vera gel.  It worked, but I wanted to know which things were doing the job.

This was eucalyptus and methylated spirits, with a bit of water, and worked very well, except that I moved it and smudged it.

This one was just methylated spirits(alcohol) and water.  (I have found that a little bit of water is neccesary)
I worked, but was a bit blurry.

This one was eucalyptus and water and also worked very well, although I redid the bottom and mis aligned it!
So, I think that although the alcohol does transfer, it doesn't fix the ink and bleeds a little.  The eucalyptus seems to do a good job, and has the advantage that it will evaporate away.  I think Perhaps the gel or glycerin helps to stop the bleeding because it makes the transfer medium thicker and less able to bleed.  any way, I have had some good results and will continue experimenting.
Oh, I nearly forgot, it also works well on paper.

Also, I had a little mistake and printed on the wrong side of the transparency.  I found that the ink did not dry on the acetate, so I had a go at transferring it.

I sprayed a little glen 20 ( antiseptic spray, mostly alcohol and water) on the ink and simply pressed it into the fabric.  It worked!  Just a bit of bleeding.

In this one, I used fabric which had been sprayed with alum solution to try and stop the blurring.  It worked, but the image was still not great.  The alum seemed to coagulate the black ink although the coloured inks transfered well.  This would be good for outlining with a fine black stitching....

On this one, I sprayed the glen 20 on the fabric and the damp fabric made it bleed.
This second set of experiments needs a little more refining.  My reason for exploring it is that transparencies are expensive and can only be used once.  I happen to have a lot of simple acetate sheets which I picked up at a junk store, still in their packets (the type we used to use with white board pens, when they were called overhead pens - a long time ago, lol)  The second two prints above used these sheets and after transfer, I simply wiped them clean and used them again-wow!
Anyhow, I have been having a bit of fun, playing with this technique!

don't forget to play with your art materials!