A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Printing on Plastic


 I secured this big piece of plastic -- I think it's a tile for a dropped ceiling -- and used it for my next series of monoprinting experiments.  I was hoping to find a way to create marble-like images without the fuss and bother of a traditional size and using thickened dyes instead of paint.


So I didn't scratch my brand-new piece of plastic, I got the plastic combs from my marbling supplies for combing through the dyes.


But as soon as I laid the fabric down, the intricate fine lines were smashed and lost.  So I found that if I laid down a layer of plain thickener and then dropped on the thickened dyes and combed through, there was more of that lovely patterning.


 I didn't use any resists other than the base layer of thickener and, yes, there are some dogs here.


 I had a lot of fun smooshing the dye around on the plastic -- I found that if I didn't clean the plastic of the dyes from the previous print, they would mix with the plain thickener and provide a bit of color in the background.


So none of these are really white (although they look that way to me in the photos).  And as long as I stayed away from combining colors that would create mud, it was a pretty successful venture; although I was not really able to create fine marbled patterns because the dyes don't spread like paint on size.  Oh -- and it's good to wear gloves to do this.

4 comments:

  1. Well done in the search of... A friend of mine is using soap as a thickener to copy the marble effect and gets nice soapflowerresults. http://marriette.blogspot.com/2012/03/zeep-bloemen-verven.html
    Will ask her if i can post it here in english!

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  2. your effort make it easy to follow..I will keep it in mind Printing on plastic and will use it if i needed.

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  3. Very helpful for those who are in search of reputable company dealing in printing on plastic....

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