Digital Grounds Hearts Organza

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 …

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.