How To Make Stamps From Foam and Cardboard

I’ve seen stuff about making stamps from foam by attaching it to wooden blocks.  I don’t understand why these people have some many wooden blocks just lying around their homes, maybe I will one day…anyway I opted to use cardboard instead.

I had some thick cardboard and I cut it into 4 pieces which turned out to be around 6 x 7.5cm and glued them on top of each other to make a cardboard block I could hold easily.

I cut some strips of foam out and glued them onto the cardboard block- half horizontally and half vertically. And that’s the stamp.  I made some others with arrows, hearts, and holly.

To ink up the stamp you dab the ink pad onto the stamp and not the other way around.  You should also store your ink pad upside down to stop it from drying out.

T-Shirt Printing With Inkodye

I posted before about using Inkodye to ‘sun print’; using photo sensitive dye on fabric and then exposing it to sunlight.  I tried before to print using a film negative (blown up and printed on acetate) but the acetate curled up and let the light in, but the dye underneath also didn’t dry properly.

This time I printed a quote onto the acetate and then cut the words out and placed them over the dye, then exposed it all to light.  The individual words didn’t curl up and were easier to work with than the large sheet of acetate, although I did pin a couple of them down.

I had put the inkodye into spray bottles and so just spritzed on some blue and purple dye, then placed the words on top.  I left it by my window for about 30mins, it was an overcast day at about 5pm but on a bright day it should take about 10mins.  I ended up leaving it overnight because I didn’t want to move it and ruin it.

In the morning I put it in the wash with the Inkodye detergent which sets the dye so it continue to react in the light, however it did seem to react slightly and the text went a little blue as it dried. But this is a significant

Sun Printing with Inkodye

So I did my little post about sun printing using the Sunography set, I’ve now moved on to Inkodye. This is a light sensitive dye which changes the colour of the fabric in light (preferably direct sunlight).

One of the fun things you can do is print a negative, so I found a black and white photo I had taken in LA.  I was planning to invert the colours which would make it like a negative, however I couldn’t figure out how to do this!  So for my practice go I just printed out the photo onto a sheet of acetate.

I then laid the t-shirt out and painted blue inkodye onto a square in the middle and placed the acetate on top- the dark bits would be protected from the sun and shouldn’t change colour which the clear areas would.  I also put some of the Inkodye in a spray bottle and sprayed the t-shirt.  I left the t-shirt in front of my window and the sunlight did change the colour of the dye.

But patch under the acetate didn’t dry properly, the acetate seemed to be uneven and the image didn’t transfer very much.  Then I left the shirt out and all the dye changed to be blue, what you’re supposed to do is wash it with the special detergent to stop the process but by this point I had already declared this a fail! But the dye does work I just need to figure out how to use it better.

How To Make A Steampunk RayGun

Steampunk Ray Gun

As part of my very slow-going project to create an entire steampunk outfit I present to you my ray gun!

I bought a cheap plastic water gun for £4 from ASDA, and painted it!  I used acrylic paint mixed with a little glue to help it stick and layered on some brown for the main body.  I had to do two layers to fully cover the green but I didn’t worry too much about getting it the exact same colour as I wanted a slightly worn look to the finish product.  I used a darker shade for some of the details on the gun, and an orange-brown for the top which houses the water.  That part was originally light yellow and I thought about leaving it be as the colour kind of went but it looked too plasticy so I decided to cover it all in paint!

To finish I used a gold paint stamp and pressed it on to the gun to make it sparkly and pretty,and also to age it.

Steampunk Ray Gun

 

Bicycle T-Shirt Printing/painting

It’s the Tour de France, in Yorkshire!   It’s coming to my little city and everyone’s super excited about it!  Well there are lots of signs everywhere which is pretty much the same thing…I’m excited anyway as I love sports and events where you don’t to travel very far and then people give you free stuff.  I think they throw hats into the crowd before the race and that’s really what I’m all about.

Anyway I thought I’d give t-shirt printing/painting another go since I was so pleased with my Stegosaurus T-shirt.  So I decided for a bike theme so that I could wear it with my free hat whilst watching cyclist with giant thighs whizz past me.  I used a t-shirt, blue Dylon paint, foam, paintbrush, pen, pictures of bikes.

I started by searching online for good pictures of bikes, this took the longest time because with this technique you only get the outline so all the detail is lost and bikes are all fiddly details it would seem.  I found three different ones- a penny farthing, a road bike, and a tricycle.  I printed them and cut them out then drew around them on the foam and cut it out of foam.

T Shirt Printing

T Shirt Printing

Next up I arrange the foam cut outs on my t-shirt and very lightly marked tiny dots indicating where each one was to go.  The  I painted the other side of the foam blue (remember to paint the other side or the image will be the reverse of the one you originally wanted), the paint would have gone on much better if my brushes hadn’t been so harden due to lack of care and you can see the streaky results in the bottom middle image.  I painted over them again straight onto the t-shirt.  On reflection I decided I preferred the initial streaky results but it was too late!

You are supposed to iron the fabric paint to set it but I just threw it into the wash which took off the top layer and gave me a more faded look.  I definitely don’t think this worked out as well as the stego shirt but it might be wearable!