Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

More Stamping

Anne, Estelle and I got together again recently for another of our monthly TED (Technique Exploration Day) event. I can't talk enough about how important it is to schedule time to just play. We love these days and do our best not to miss them. Because Anne missed last month and because she gave me a bag of stamps for my birthday, we decided to do stamping again.

Most of what we did this time was wokring with stamps from Fred B Mullett. He specializes in nature stamps and Anne has ordered from him several times. She says the customer service is exceptional and we LOVE his stamps. They have beautiful detail. Here's part of what we did on the most recent TED. I only have my and Anne's work. Estelle escaped before I could pull the camera out.

We found that the most important step in stamping is practice. Estelle has several long sample panels where she tries different stamps and inks to see what works best. This is one of Anne's sample fabrics.

This is my favorite peice of fabric that I've ever stamped. I picked up this scrap. It's the middle section of a Sugar Maple gradient. I used almost all of the leaf stamps that Anne gave me for my birthday. It's longer than what's shown in the photo. My original plan was to cut this up for postcard backgrounds. Now I don't know if I can cut it! What would you do with it?

I've mentioned my friend Cindy several times. She is a master thrift shopper. She's the one that picks up linens for me from estate sales and Goodwill. She got me a big stack of these linen cocktail napkins once. Anne latched onto them and got a head start on some Christmas gifts. She used the mussel stamp is shades of gray and black.

The chicken napkins were done with the metal stamps that we bought in London. We all have decided that we prefer screen printing inks for stamping on fabric. The inks are not quite as thick as fabric paint and show the stamp detail very well.

Cute nautical prints.

Of course there were some failures! I wanted to print some vegetable prints on tea towels. This was my practice piece and I got a unanimous vote that this was a bad idea!

We also did note cards and I'll share those next week.

Notecards

Last week I told you about the stamping day that Estelle and I had. Once I figured out the stamping surface I decided to focus my stamping on making note cards. My cards will never be the lovely cards that Gabriella makes but they are still fun for me. 

The first cards were simple with the tree stamp.

The stamp is about 1.5" tall and I love it embossed with gold.

I printed these cute birds on the back of the card. The stamp is about 1/2" tall. Both of these were the fine line metal stamps.

For these cards I sponged some Tsukineko inks on the card and then stamped over in white bubbles before adding the Fred Mullett shell stamps embossed in silver.

Here's a closeup of one of the stamps.

On the back I stamped some bubbles and this tiny little fish. It's less than 3/4" long.

You probably recognize the background for this card. I like to fuse the waste edges of hand dyed fabrics to cards for backgrounds. I stamped the flower image with a foam stamp and fabric paints and then outlined it with a wide tipped Zig Writer. Some of these will be Christmas gifts but I'll keep some for myself too!

Stamping

This past weekend Estelle and I got togher for our monthly play date.  We picked stamping for this one. Anne couldn't join us but fortunately she left her collection of stamps so we could play! 

I had lots of new stamps that I wanted to play with. These are stamps that Anne and I bought in London from a vendor in Covent Garden. He said he collected hundreds of molds for stamps in the 80's and 90's when printing shops were going out of business. Anne has been buying a few each time she goes to London. Since it was my only trip I stocked up!

We also has these beautiful detailed stamps that Anne bought from Fred B. Mullett. You really need to check out his website. The stamps are beautiful.

I've done some stamping in the past but my results have always been a bit unreliable. So I started with a half hour or so of practice to determine the best surface, pressure and ink.

It's counterintuitive to me but I determined that the best surface for me is 2 layers of thin poly batting. I think this is Thermore. I expect that a single layer of cotton batting would work equally well. This explains some of my previous problems with stamping on a hard surface. 

I also created a cardboard jig that I could use to help me position stamps on note cards. The taped pieces create the holding area for the card. There's one on the bottom too. I use straight pins to position other pieces in the sides or bottom that helped me position the stamps.

Estelle stamped these pieces to use on some Pocketed Notebook Covers. I've never been able to get the really fine lined stamps to print on fabric but Estelle stuck at it and figured it out. She tried several paints and inks and discovered that screen printing ink works really well. She spread a thin layer of ink on a foam plate and stamped on the plat to pick up the ink. The trees at the bottom were done with the fine line tree stamp and the screen ink.

Then she tried the big fish and it worked great! She's going to have some very cool notebook covers.

I focused on note cards and I'll share those next week.

Gelatin Printing

A few weeks ago we had another "TED" (Technique Exploration Day). Anne skipped out on us so Estelle and I were alone to do some gelatin printing.

Let's start with the good stuff. We used the instructions in this book. I probably have almost every surface design book written but, hand down, this is my favorite. It's well written, well organized with clear instructions and lots of great photos.Of course, there is a whole chapter on gelatin printing.

I didn't get any in-process photos of our day. It's certainly easy enough to create the gelatin plate. I was able to even create one giant one in a shallow cookie sheet (or whatever that pan is called). It only took a few hours for the gelatin to set up although I let it set overnight just to be sure.

It's a simple process. You spread paint or thickened dye on the gelatin plate, place a mask on the surface and then print the fabric. You can then remove the mask and print the surface again and you can use the mask as a stamp for a 3rd image. Of course there are lots of variations from there. As the gelatin plate is used it also develops interesting texture on its own.

If you want to see some cool work with gelatin printing, check out these slide shows from LuAnn Kessi.

I have to be honest, neither Estelle or I were enamoured with this technique. It's OK but we both found ourselves thinking that there are other ways to accomplish the same effect.

With gelatin printing you are limited to the size of plate that you make. With other techniques, like straight stamping or painting, you can work on any size surface you wish. These are some of the samples that I made using thickened dye. I knew I was in trouble with this technique when I lamented over "ruining" my "good scrap fabrics"!

I even tried it with some fabric paints. The technique worked like it should, I think, but it's just not the kind of print that I would work with. I think I am better with overall textures or very defined images like you get with screen printing, stamping and batik.

I'm glad we tried it and I certainly see the appeal for some artists, but don't expect to see any more gelatin printing in my future!

This month will be a diffrerent story. I expect that we are going to have a blast with resist techniques.

Screen Printing, part 2

Last week I shared Estelle's results from screen printing day. Today I'll share mine. I don't really have any "end results" but I got to do what I wanted to do and that was learning how to use Speedball Diazo Photoemulsion to make my own screens. Dharma Trading has links to several video tutorials for using Photoemulsion at the bottom of this page. I was going to take photos of the process but those videos are better than anything I would be able to put together.

I am so glad that I took this time to finally learn how to make these screens. It wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done. It is now that I know how to do it but, for me, it had a 1 bottle learning curve! I didn't have successful screens until the second bottle. But that's OK, it's much less expensive than the EZScreens and the Photoemulsion Remover works great!

My objective was to get good screen images with thick and thin lines. You really have to learn this by doing. It takes practice to learn how thick to apply the Photoemulsion. After the screen is covered you have to let it dry thoroughly in the dark. I prepared my images in transparency the same as for the EZScreen sheets. I eventually learned that I had to have acrylic glass to make sure that the transparency image stays in contact with the Photoemulsion surface during exposure. If the transparency does not stay in contact with the screen, the image will not burn clear. 

I also learned that, for my screens, the exposure time in full sun is EXACTLY 1 minute. Any longer and the image will not release from the screen. The screens can handle pretty rough scrubbing to clear but it really takes several minutes of spraying water to get the image to release.

Here's an example of overexposure. Focus on that big area in the middle. Only the spots where you can see the bright white are the spots that released. The rest may look like it's OK, but it's not.

Here are the 3 screens that I created. The 2 on the left are from Dover book images. The one on the right is a photoshopped image that I took of tree bark. 

The big screen in the back is this texture. After 3 tries I finally got the image to burn correctly. I will likely clear this (and the front screen). They did eventually burn well but I don't need to have wood frame screens dedicated to these designs. Besides, I have the transparencies and can always create them again.

I'll probably keep the tree bark because I think it will make a great background for lots of things.

Here's part of the tree bark image printed. I like it.

I also wanted to see if I could create my own screen frame. I really like the thermofax screens that I get from Lynn Krawczyk and love that she has them "loose" framed in duct tape. It makes them very easy to store and clean. I want to be able to make these screens, remove them from the frames and store them the way my thermofax screens are stored.

I created the duct tape frame from an old book binding. The book board is very sturdy and I covered it in duct tape to make it water resistant. I taped the screen to it with more duct tape making sure the screen was taught. After the Photoemulsion dried I burned it with this little skull image. After the image was bured I removed the screen fro the frame, trimmed it up and taped the edges.

It was the perfect tacky ending to these perfectly tacky cards that I will never send to anyone! But the point is that the impromptu screen framed worked great.

It may not seem like I accomplished much. I sort of didn't. But I finally used that 12 month old bottle of Photoemulsion! Now I know how to do it and will not be hesitant to creat my own screens in the future. I love it.