Sheers

Digital Grounds Hearts Organza

08 Dec | Posted in Digital Grounds, Image Transfer, Inkjet Printing, Sheers | By LindaM

If you love printing on organza and thought that this was the best result you could get, then you are simply going to love this news … you can print even better images on organza, with 100% transparency, by using a clear tar gel acrylic skin as a backing.

I first heard about using clear tar gel as a skin for organza over on Marie Z. Johansen’s blog where’s she’s also doing some fun stuff with digital grounds, so I thought I’d give it a try as well.

Preparing an acrylic skin with clear tar gel can be a little challenging because of the thick and icky consistency of the gel, but being self-leveling, it isn’t so important to get an even coverage as with other gels or mediums because it levels itself and dries with an even and mark-free surface, and crystal clear transparency. The only thing I *really* didn’t like about this type of skin was the high gloss sheen it produced, however I found that you can tone down the gloss sheen by using a matte spray sealer.

On the upside, it does offer options for printing exceptionally vivid transparent images.

Using the same printer with the same photo settings, this is an image printed on untreated organza …

Printing on Organza

the same image printed on organza treated with digital grounds …

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Printing on Sheer Fabric

26 Aug | Posted in Image Transfer, Sheers | By LindaM

ExtravorganzaI use sheer fabrics quite a bit, mostly for shading and other special effects on my art quilts. However I thought I’d take it a step further and try some experiments with printed sheers.

I’ve heard a lot about Extravorganza and how great a product it was so I had no hesitation in purchasing a pack but have to say it was an expensive and disappointing experience. After doing a few small test prints with good results, I printed my design which was quite large and took up most of one sheet. After removing the backing paper I found that the fabric had been attached to the backing paper crooked so my resulting print had a lovely and extremely noticeable wavy edge on two sides, which was not at all the effect I was looking for and after trimming the edges my design was considerably reduced in size and the effect was lost.

So while I might recommend Extravorganza for the convenience of doing small prints, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for anyone wanting to work with large prints, particularly since it is so expensive and the risk of a lopsided print is high.

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