Did you read Craft Stamper this month? TAP

08/01/2013 by UKMA 6 Comments

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….