Easy clean up of printing plate after stamping

Cover your printing plate with sticky Cling Film before you put paint on it and when you are done you just throw away the film and you don't have to wash your plate.

Don’t Believe It If They Say It is PFD Or Prewashed By Someone Else

This T shirt is from a company who dyes and washes their garments before selling them. SO…I just figured I could dye it without prewashing it myself.
BIG mistake.
It didn’t want to absorb the soda ash solution so I just added more and tried to squish it through the fabric. Well, it was obvious when I took it out of the dye it didn’t make it all the way through.
This is the front.

 

 

This is the back and the same thing happened on the inner layer. Not only did the dye not work, but I lost all the patterning I had carefully arranged when I was trying to squish the liquid into the fabric. 
The only thing I like a little is the colors I got, but even they were not what I would usually get with those dye colors.
If this doesn’t make a believer out of you, then you too likely will experience something like this when you are dyeing something special.
Is it worth the risk to take a chance when it is so easy to prewash your fabric or garment?

Alcohol Ink Play Day

First check out the message inside the Dove wrapper I had last night!  How perfect for today's post!

Beth was our hostess and instructor today for playing with alcohol inks on fabric.  Although, we did cheat and play with some paper and inks too!

Nancy played with some inks and alcohol on freezer paper!  Pretty cool!

This was Beth's piece - inks on Yupo paper

This was Beth's fabric which was under some freezer paper she was playing with!  Love this piece!

This is Nancy's piece that she added more alcohol to!  

Beth's piece using  a stencil and spraying with alcohol inks and alcohol

I had a quilted piece I wanted to try the inks on.  Kay gave me the suggestion to fold the quilt and then spray!



You can see the folds, then the piece was clipped which helped it stand up so I could spray!

And here is the first spray using red Dynaflow paint (mixed with water and alcohol).  Next I folded the opposite way and sprayed with Rit dye (mixed with water/alcohol)

And the end results...well, so far that is!  I'm not finished with it yet.  Just another piece that I have to meditate on for awhile!

Robbie's drop cloth

This rubbing I had used Inktense blocks,which you can see washed out.  But that's because they are watercolor blocks! You can still see some of the rubbing.

This section I used oil pastel crayons

And this section I used Neocolor 1 crayons.

I made a freezer paper stencil and sprayed blue Dynaflow paint (yep, mixed with alcohol and water).

I removed the freezer paper...spray did cover quite well.

This was another thermofax screen printed piece that was blah.  I sprayed the upper left corner with alcohol, then laid down a 'gear' stencil, then sprayed with Rit liquid dye (mixed with water and alcohol).  I was disappointed that the colors ran.
So, for the rest of the piece, I just sprayed the dry fabric with the Rit/alcohol mixture.  I like this much better.  I did get another suggestion from Beth to lay the stencil on top of the area that ran and use oil pastel crayons to define the edges!  How cool!  I will do that when we're back home.

This was just another small piece I used the Neocolor 1 crayons and did rubbings.  Should be a good piece for fiber cards.








Huge thanks to Beth for opening up her garage and home for us to play with the inks!  She really did have some good tips and tricks she shared with us!

Block Printing - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly!!

These are the prints I did 3/8/2017.

Can you find my newest blocks?

I am resolving some things as I work.

I did find my textile medium, but not until after I did these.

And I found one container of Pro Fab paint, also after I did these.

I consider this research and development!

My goal is to only work with the paints I already own before they dry up!

I did order the firm sponge brayer that Robbie used and I'll have it Saturday.

March Part 2 - Stamping on Fabric

 BETH'S STAMPED FABRIC

 BONNIE'S STAMPED FABRIC

KAY'S STAMPED FABRIC

wow

NANCY'S STAMPED FABRIC

ROBBIE'S STAMPED FABRIC

March Part 1 - Stamp Carving

March 2017 

We settled in quickly getting to work  carving our stamps!

Beth, Bonnie and Nancy working away!

Kay was very busy and had two different types of carving blocks to work with.

The top white block is made of rubber that most of us use to carve our stamps.  This rubber block is easy to carve and gives a decent print.  Kay's bottom  green carving (the opposite side is blue - but you an carve either side) is a vinyl block produced in Japan.  This type of block is used by some of your major linocut artists who print on paper.  Kay did say it wasn't hard to carve so I'm anxious to see how it prints on fabric.  

Bonnie was carving a free hand block!  It will be a great background stamp!

Nancy was working hard even carving some rubber erasers!  

The pink block Nancy is carving is a circle with rays extending out from the circle.  Should be a cool print.

The pink block and flower carvings are Beth's.  She also had a lino block  (grey) that she cut.  The lino block Beth found at Hobby Lobby.  She did a  good job of carving an interesting  geometric design.

The large stamp is one I carved back in 2009 when I took an online 'lino' class from Dijanne Cevaal.  It was a great class and Dijanne provided so much information!!  I know she offers her lino online class from time to time.  Her blog is great inspiration for seeing how stamping on fabric can really enhance an ugly piece of fabric!

  Betty Cake for dessert!    Oops...and here I thought it was a stamp!

We have been joking about what we could do with some of the carving scraps!  Oh boy!  I can honestly think of a few things but do I really need another project!  I think not!