I promised a how-to guide for the teacup I previewed early, so here it is! (If you can't be bothered to read it all, basically you get your pictures printed, get em in water, put em on stuff and get em hot. Not tricky.) Step One Buy your blank ceramics. For test pieces I just bought a selection from a popular blue and yellow Swedish establishment. For my "proper" ones, I hope to get them made by a potter so there are no nasty copyright issues! For home use I'm sure Ikea don't mind. Step Two Decide on your designs. To get my head around this I printed lots of different bits and bobs onto scrap paper and blue tacked them to the china, helpful for 3D thinking! I also had the good sense to take photos on my phone of the different arrangements so that I could remember them all! Step Three Arrange a sheet of your chosen designs. I use a combo of hand drawn work, edited and arranged with Photoshop and Illustrator. Mostly because I'm tight and wanted to cram as much on one A3 sheet as possible! Send your sheet to a digital ceramic printer (like normal printers, but instead of ink the cartridges are full of ceramic toner.) I used these guys, mainly as there were no minimum order requirements. If you happen to find a brilliant one, please let me know! Sometimes the transfers are also called ceramic decals, incase you're not finding what you need. Step Four Using a pair of scissors or a scalpel, cut out all your lovely shapes and pictures. Here the earlier phone pics came in useful to remember which shape went with what item. If you're more of a "let's just see what happens" kind of crazy individual, you could always wing it and see what you come up with! Step Five Put your transfers one at a time into lukewarm water. They curled up, which slightly alarmed me, but thankfully not in the manner of cling film (which I'm pretty sure hates me, but that's another matter...) Leave them about 20 seconds, and the backing paper should start to separate from the actual transfer with the lightest rub. They seem fairly robust, but I wouldn't throw them around. Step Six Using a combination of a dry tea towel and a squeegee, put your transfers onto your chosen piece (I thought I'd be a renegade and see if some worked on glass. Turns out, yes!) The aim here is just to get rid of all the air bubbles and creases, as this will affect your final finish. Step 7 Once all your transfers have been put in place and flattened properly, leave them to dry for at least 6 hours, but ideally overnight. Don't touch them. No, not even a little bit. The blue around all the images was just the colour of paper from my particular ceramic printer - it burns up without affecting the final image, phew. Step Eight Find a friendly potter with a kiln that they don't mind you sneaking pieces into for a small fee:) I can recommend local art colleges like here for this, good luck in your search! I ran several test pieces to fine tune the temperature required, but most transfers come with firing guidelines. Step Nine
Wait till the kiln is cool enough to break in and fall in love with just how cool your pictures look on ceramics. It's addictive, I warn you!
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As part of my new product investigation, which hopefully will be coming soon, I wanted to produce fabric labels to be attached to textile objects like cushions, bags, purses etc. I was pretty chuffed that they worked out so well, so I thought I'd spread the love with this little how to tutorial... Step One I bought fabric tape in white from the land of the internet (eBay) that was wide enough for the design I had in mind. In my case, this was 25mm, so the edges of my labels always look neat and don't require any time consuming stitching etc. Step Two Using Indesign, I created a repeated design of my labels. On the first take I included my website, but this was far too finely detailed for the fabric to cope with, so I ended up keeping it simple and legible. The great thing about Indesign is that it's very controllable to the tiniest measurement, allowing for plenty of fine tuning in the printing stage. Whilst designing, you might want to consider making your design larger than the ribbon width to allow for some wiggle room in the printing stage. As my labels are going to be looped over, each individual label has text upside down as well as right side up. Step Three Next I used normal sticking tape to attach the ribbon at both ends to a piece of normal A4 paper. For extra security I put some double sided tape underneath the ribbon to make sure it was really secure and straight. Then I hit print! (Please note this is a tiny bit of a gamble, and I take no responsibility if your printer chews it up and spits it out in a huff...) It took a few takes of fine tuning to work out the exact millimetre placement of the ribbon to make it repeatable and guaranteed, so it's worth not cutting a really long piece first time. Having an understanding of which way round your printer feeds really helps with this! Step Four The fabric is fairly damp with ink when it first shoots out, so I let mine dry for a good hour, and then ironed it very thoroughly to make the ink set. Again, the success of this depends on your printer and the ink you use - it's definitely worth doing a test piece and washing it to check your ink will stay to avoid heartache! Then it's just a case of cutting up your labels, folding them and stitching them to anything and everything your heart desires! Good luck! Let me know how you get on!
I've been toying with the idea lately of developing some fabric and ceramic ranges, which would showcase illustrated surface pattern. I came to the conclusion that to make it look the tiniest bit convincing, I'd have to figure out a reliable screen printing method to make a few samples... So I did a bit of internet trawling and thought I'd give it a go! Step 1 - Decide on your pattern I scrawled a few designs down which varied in complexity and size so as to work out what the limits of home screen printing might be... Step 2 - Cut them out of acetate Depending on how handy you are, a scalpel or scissors might suit you best. For me, scissors are my friend. I also read about other methods of creating your "stencil" - painting PVA glue or latex paint onto organza (the same organza as Step 3.) If you try any other methods, be sure to let me know how it goes! Step 3 - Make your screen I bought an embroidery hoop that was larger than all my designs, and some organza fabric from the wonderful people of Bicester Village Fabrics who couldn't have been more helpful! I put the organza into the embroidery hoop and secured it so that it was tight as a drum. You could also buy a picture frame from a charity shop and staple gun that bad boy. I went for the hoop for size and adjustability reasons (also, if it was a horrible failure I could just take the organza out and bury it.) Again, let me know if you try other methods, I'd love to hear from you! Step 4 - Attach your acetate to your screen. Using sellotape, I attached my acetate to the face of the screen that would be between the organza and the fabric/paper/glass you want to print onto - i.e. the face where the organza is flush to the wooden hoop. I then filled in all gaps around the acetate with sellotape so that there was no chance any pesky ink could get where it wasn't wanted. Step 5 - Print like a machine. Putting your prepared screen onto the surface you want to print onto. For me this was pieces of cloth like calico and cotton. Keep your screen still, whether this be by weights or a friendly pair of hands. If it shifts whilst you're printing you'll get a smudged or echoed image. Bad times. Using fabric paint or whatever you fancy trying, put a small line on the acetate above your design. Using an old credit card or other kind of spreading device, pull the paint down firmly - it should get through the holes in your acetate and nothing else, leaving a perfect stencil! Repeat as desired and absorb the adoration. Then clean up. A few notes: If you're doing a repeat pattern where your hoop will cover over previously printed areas, be careful to let it dry first or you'll get a smudgy mess.
For my first take I used Dylon fabric paint, which I found to be too runny and seeped under the stencil. I had best results with standard Acrylic paint, which I ironed once dry to set (in between some old sheets so that my iron didn't go green.) I'll let you know if it is wash proof! My bet is yes, I can never jolly get it off my clothes when it's got there by mistake! I think that I'll invest in some proper inks soon, probably from these nice people. If you have a go at this, I would love to hear from you! Happy printing! |
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