Napkin Stamping

These were made as a wedding gift for some friends and I just finally finished and delivered them last week. They didn't turn out exactly as planned - stamping with textile paint on dark fabric is much, much harder than I had anticipated.

I made the napkins myself from a dark brown twill. I also carved the stamps - the ones you can see here are papyrus and lotus columns drawn from ancient Egyptian motifs. I also had adorable golden flies, but didn't get a photo.

For the green metallic paint I would up sponge-brushing the paint onto the stamp, which is why they're a bit blobby.

For the blue, which was not metallic, I cobbled together a stamp pad with some papertowels. This used quite a lot of paint and wasn't really saveable for future use, but worked resonably well.

Using a brayer didn't work at all. I'm not sure if that's because I have a cheap-ass brayer, if it wasn't suited to working with acrylic paint, or if I just suck.

For the golden flies (no photo) I sponge-brushed again.

I did discover that re-carving some lines helped with the blobbiness.

In the future I don't know that I'll do long, thin motifs, especially with long straight lines.
I will probably also stick to lighter colored fabrics in the immediate future as I've had much better results with them.

I also plan to get some screenprinting ink to experiment with to see if I can get a better result on a variety of colors.

The battery in our digital camera died, so unfortunately the only half-way decent picture we were able to get was with my phone. :P

Tea, Collaboration, and Contemplation

A very wonderful friend came to visit me today bearing yummy cheeses and crackers and cookies and chocolate.  Bat cookies!  We made a pot of tea and had fun laughing at Oreo being a punk trying to convince us to share cheese and crackers and cookies.
We looked at the fabric paint/print block conundrum, which inspired me to do a bit more research into a solution.  I thought I'd share what I'd found
 - making a stamp won't work with the metallic acrylics I'm using for this particular project, but might be possible with non-metallics.  Apparently the light reflective particles (like mica) don't really pass through the felt or paper towel or whatever you choose to use for the pad.  This makes sense, but I would never have realized it and thus might well have wasted time and paint.
- A lot of people seem to feel that using inks is a better idea.  Typically water-based or acrylic screen-printing or block printing inks.  I haven't used them myself yet, but I hesitate to use them because I've found the range of colors to be limited and because they're difficult to find in many stores and I like to be able to buy stuff in person the first time around.  I also worry that some of them tend to leave too much of a thick layer and a stiff hand.  But then, so do the metallics.
- I have also seen a lot of suggestions for using a brayer to apply paint/ink to the block.  I think this is the direction I'm most inclined toward at the moment.
- There is also a suggestion to use cotton swabs or similar items to clean paint out of the grooves just before printing.  I sort of tried this already with a paintbrush and didn't find it all that satisfactory, but I may give it another shot.

The finished printed towels

I posted a few days ago about my very first print blocks.  I managed to get some pretty nice photos of the finished printed towels as well.  I think they turned out really well.  I'm going to spend the next week or so working on some more designs for kitchen and table linens (napkins, place mats, dish towels, table runners, etc.).  I'm still undecided about whether it would be better and/or more economical to make objects from scratch using cotton, linen, or cotton-linen blends or if using ready-made things is a better idea.  Anyone with info on where to find ready-made items for reasonable (cheap) prices, do let me know.

Print Blocks!

I've been wanting to try print or stamp block carving for quite some time.  Last weekend I bought the basic materials - carving block, tools, and some fabric paints.  This past week was spent looking for Egyptologically inspired designs I liked and getting it ready to transfer. I chose a garden pool scene that features very typically ancient Egyptian perspective and a sema-tawy.  Sema-tawy literally means "united are the two lands" and is a common decorative motif on the sides of royal thrones.  It unites the heraldic plants (the lily and the papyrus) of Upper and Lower Egypt around the hieroglyph for "unity."  As the prints are to be a gift for my parents 30th anniversary, I thought the unity motif would be fitting.  Plus I've always loved it both for its visual appeal and because I have always enjoyed the way ancient Egyptian artists combined symbolic motifs, art, and writing.

I decided to go with the acetone transfer technique.  Essentially, you take a printout from a laser printer or photocopier, lay it face down on your block and rub some acetone on it.  The toner is transferred to your block and you just carve away.

Unfortunately,  my laser printer at home is not conducive to this method.  Fortunately, Tom volunteered to get copies elsewhere and it eventually worked beautifully.  

Yesterday evening was thus spent in front of the TV with my lap desk while I carved away.  I found it amazingly fun and managed not to injure myself or any innocent bystanders.

Today I worked on pulling prints to two flour-sack cotton towels.  I did the garden pool print at the center and the sema-tawy motif in each corner and centered just above each hem alternating in red, yellow, and blue.  I couldn't get a good photo of the full towel this evening.  I will try to do so tomorrow before everything goes into the mail, but no guarantees.

Here are two of the sema-tawy prints:

The first garden pool print:

And the second garden pool scene:

For both types of print, I slathered on the various colors of paint as quickly and evenly as possible, then very, very lightly misted with water and put it face-down on the fabric and applied very light, even pressure.  After lifting the block I went in and filled in color or made a few corrections by hand.

My back is killing me at this point and it took me most of the day to do all this, but I really like the results.  Next up I think I'm going to try some smaller stamps and a few other motifs.