OK, one of the things I toyed with in terms of a year-long project was to do SOMETHING from Craft Stamper magazine every month. But that only comes out 12 times over the year so I felt it wasn’t quite the right project. BUT the last one I read had an article about TAP (Transfer Artists Paper) that I thought was interesting. I was keen to give it a go, but didn’t have any (story of my life!) and dithered about buying some for a few days then thought I wonder…..
I delved into the depths of a side cupboard and dragged out my stash of T-shirt Transfer paper and decided to give that a try to see what I could achieve with it.
My first experiment was just a small stamp. I stamped with Memento int and coloured in with Distress Ink smudged on a glass mat, mixed with water, and painted. It worked pretty well.
Of course, like in the mag, the text is reversed. I thought about it a bit and did some housekeeping stuff, then read a blog or two. When I saw Julia had named a date for the 2nd WOYWW crop, of course the idea to make something to identify myself with popped into my head. The first thing I did was spray the above piece with water to see if the inks ran at all. Not one bit. I then assumed that if you follow the instructions for the transfer paper you will be able to keep it looking decent, provided you aren’t wearing it every day (for a shirt – for something like a canvas tote, less of an issue.) Then I grabbed another scrap and played.
I basically created a little art piece. I stress this is NOT intended to be a final piece – I wanted to use a few different things, see how it worked and then plan what I wanted to do. This one sort of grew from grabbing things and saying I wonder if that will work? I began by smudging the DI all over the piece. THIS brand (and it was out of its original packaging but I THINK it was WH Smith’s own brand) was hardy enough to accept that. I laid over some stencils, stamped a bit more, then thought about how to add the text. I think it WOULD work to compose the text, reverse it, print on printer paper then attach the piece securely to the print and print again. But I was so far along I really didn’t want to mess it up so instead I cut a stencil of my name from a piece of card using the Cricut and SCAL. By reversing the stencil (which I smudged thru with Memento, not DI) I could make the text appear the right way round as this paper gets ironed on reversed. I also stamped with Distress Stain. I ironed it on, let it cool and peeled off the backing and…
The Distress stain really looks interesting and shows up better than I hoped:
So there you go. That t-shirt paper has been languishing in the back of the cupboard for ages, and now it has a whole new lease of life! Cool beans….
