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.

Sun Printing with Sunography Fabric Set

A while ago I did some research on sun printing- that is using light sensitive fabric or dye to create a pattern or design onto fabric.  I started with this Sunography Fabric Set which provides you with 6 small squares of fabric that are already light sensitive.   There isn’t enough fabric to make anything but it’s good for experimentation.  The fabric comes in a black bag to protect it from light and you need to keep it all sealed.

The best results come from direct sunlight but I don’t have a garden so I arranged a few objects on the fabric and then left it next to the window. The area around the objects reacted to the sunlight and changed colour while the covered areas did not.

I bought some Lumi Inkodye which is dye that makes fabric light sensitive and I’m gonna try that out and get back to you. All I need now is some sun!

How To Make Wrapping Paper

Here’s a little video on how to make your own wrapping paper, I used brown paper and the rubber stamps I made before.

 

Printing With Rubber Stamps

I’ve heard more than once about using rubbers/erasers to make stamps but I’d never actually tried it.  For one thing rubbers are not something I really keep around the house anymore so it’s a trek into town to purchase them.  But trek I did and I bought two for £2, they’re just regular (cheap) ones that you might put in a boring child’s pencil case.

Anyway, I drew on my designs; HAPPY XMAS and a Christmas Tree because I want to jazz up my plain brown wrapping paper for Christmas.  I had to write my text backwards as the stamps print in reverse.

I then used a tool I had got into a Scratch Image set a while ago to cut away at the rubber leaving the letters and tree remaining.

I pressed the rubber stamps into a ink stamp pad I have and then did some test prints.  I like it turned out really cute!  I plan to go and buy some more and make different designs like stars and holly.

 

 

 

 

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!

 

 

Pillowcase Printing- Image Maker Review

A while back I bought some Dylon Image Maker out of curiosity which allows you to transfer images from magazines or photos to fabric.  Below is what I did to print an image onto a plain pillowcase and also a review of Image Maker.

A few things to consider about Image Maker before you start:

• Any image you use will be reversed in the transfer so text will be mirrored
• You can only use magazines, photos, or laser printer print outs (not ink jet printers), or photocopies
• The image you use will be destroyed so you may want to photocopy photos if you want to keep them
• Whatever fabric you’re going to transfer onto needs to go in the wash first (and iron it!)
• You will need Image Maker (duh), an image, some fabric, paintbrush, tea towel or kitchen roll, rolling pin, sponge, cardboard

 

1. I got my awesome Pikachu picture and cut it out.  2. I painted the Image Maker on the right side of my image.  3. I place the image face down on the pillow case.  4.  I placed kitchen roll  over the image and rolled it for several minutes. 5. I left the image to dry out overnight.  6.  I socked the image and began gently rubbing it with a sponge.  7.  I continued rubbing until the desired image was brought to the fore.

This is essential the finished result for me, the next step is to apply another coat of image maker over the top to seal in the image but I never bothered with that.  As you can see you can see black marks under the images which are where I applied the image maker thicker.  I also made the mistake of placing a magazine inside the pillowcase instead of cardboard and the magazine got stuck to it and the image from that came off too!

I would say this was a mitigated failure for me.  It was a good experiment and I think I might get this to work better with more practice.  This was actually my second attempt, the first was with an inkjet print out and it totally didn’t work.  The magazine image worked much better but still a long way off.

My review of Image Maker is: great idea, affordable price*, clear instructions given, seems totally doable, will probably go wrong at some point and turn out crummy.

*£5-8

Swimming Tote Bag Using Transfer Printing

I got a free plain tote bag from work (I think it was an unwanted sample no one wanted) that I have had for a while.  I didn’t really know what to do with it, I wanted to print on it but I wasn’t sure what image.

It occurred to me today though, as I was waiting for boyfriend to pick me up for swim date that I could do with a swim bag.  After searching for suitable images for far too long I settled on a simple pictogram of swimming (from one of the Olympics I believe).

I used folex transfer paper (which was not cheap, about £10 for 10 sheets and I have since seen stuff for about £3 from Wilkinson) and printed my swimming images onto the paper.  Any images will be reversed when transferred so if they have text you’ll need to flip the image before printing it.

I then turned my iron on and up to the highest heat setting.  I placed the paper faced down on the tote bag and ironed it.  You are supposed to placed a pillow case on top and iron through that but I found my iron was not good enough to iron through two things at once so I just did it straight onto the paper.  It took a few minutes, and you need to keep the iron moving around to prevent it from burning and make sure you get the edges of the paper.

After a few minutes the paper was stuck to the tote bag, I left it to cool (like a good girl, and also because it was painful when I tried to touch it hot).  Once cool I peeled the backing paper off and there was my jazzy new swim bag! The whole thing took less than 10mins.

Previous Make- Stegosaurus Printed T-Shirt

I suppose if I’d have wanted to be super fancy I would have made the t-shirt from scratch too but I just bought a pre-made one to experiment with and went to town with some dino printing.  I bought some thin foam sheets that cost about 50p each from Hobbycraft (I loves me some hobbycraft!) and drew a stegosaurus onto it.

I should point out I like dinosaurs, and was really indulging in dino love at this time of my life (I have dino stickers, posters, hair grips, fabric, cards, temporary tattoos, ornaments).  But thinking practically the image for printing had to have a simple and recognisable outline as any detail would be lost.  So a stegosaurus was the obvious choice.

I bought some Dylon fabric paint and painted it on to the foam stegs then printed them on to the t-shirt, but the foam didn’t transfer very well and I had to paint over them with a paintbrush and I ended up using a whole little pot of paint and I only painted them on one side of the t-shirt.