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 …

the same image printed on organza treated with digital grounds …

and the same image printed on organza with a clear tar gel skin backing, and then treated with digital grounds.

or to make it even more obvious

This technique is explored in more detail on my DVD Exploring Digital Grounds on Fabric. Or at the very least consider purchasing a sample pack of digital grounds to play around with. You can find out how to order digital grounds here.

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.

So I still had to find a solution for my large sheer print and it was an easy fix after all. I do a lot of inkjet printing on cotton fabric and have found that the best way to get it through my printer with 100% success every time is to adhere it to a full sheet size label. Freezer paper is ok but sometimes it slips and sometimes it doesn’t feed through properly. Full sheet size labels are guaranteed to get it through the printer each and every time – I’ve never had a misprint using label backings. And the best thing is that each sheet can be reused up to approximately 8-10 times if you’re careful.

So using full size labels as backing, I decided to try it with sheer organza using a little extra care to ensure the sides adhered straight. I stopped off at the fabric store and picked up a yard of white organza ($5.00 on sale – don’t you just love a bargain?). So now the challenge was not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to ensure that the fabric adhered to the backing straight on all sides.

First I cut a piece of organza slightly larger than the label.

Then to ensure that the edges adhered straight on all sides, I frayed away the edges on two sides of the organza until I had two perfectly straight edges.

Then I aligned the two straight edges with the lines on my cutting mat, and taped all four sides of the organza to the mat using masking tape. I then peeled the backing from the label and positioned it along the “straight” top and side edge and pressed it down firmly on all sides.

Using a brayer I then pressed the label to the fabric to ensure it stuck properly all over and after removing the masking tape I turned it over and brayered from the fabric side to get rid of any bubbles. I trimmed the edges of the fabric to size and could see that it was perfectly placed. Now for the moment of truth – printing out my design and it was a perfect print with perfectly straight edges – ahh success!! And although the backing paper ended up with a ghost image transfer it was still quite sticky and useful for additional print jobs so success all the way round.