Yes, You Can Use Your Computer for Rugs

Casey from http://caseymini.blogspot.com/ sent me a note and asked if I have thought about using pictures printed from my computer to produce a rug. The answer was, "Yes!"


I took a digital picture of a southwestern rug and then transferred it into my PC. I then enhanced the picture for colors and all those wonderful things you can do with the photo editing software. Then I printed it out on photo paper.


Once I had printed it on photo paper, I then sprayed three coats of semi-gloss workable fixative, which I had picked up at Michaels. The fixative does two things - it seals the inks into the picture so that they won't smear. Two, the fixative I used adds protection against ultra violet rays, which are a key cause of colors fading in fabrics or in printed materials.


Once I took those protective steps, I then went back to the tried and true tissue paper and Deft process. I liked the rug well enough that I made them for all of the members of our miniature club for our gift exchange.

By the way, I DID try to print off a beautiful Victorian rug design onto cloth using the T-shirt transfer printing materials for inkjet printers. It didn't even begin to do justice to the depth of color and beauty of the carpet I saw on the Web. I even had contacted the rug merchant to request permission from him to recreate his carpet in miniature for my dollhouse bedroom. That whole effort was a bust, unfortunately!