Thursday, March 5, 2009

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!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi
I print straight onto fabric on my inkjet printer. This works best in printers that feed straight through the printer. Printers that fold the paper over don't work for this.
Use only ironed cotton fabric such as calico or sheeting. Using scrapbookers acid free double sided tape, I cover an A4 sheet of cardstock then remove the backing tape. Carefully press the fabric onto the tape covering the whole A4. Neatly trim off the A4 leaving no loose threads. Print using the "Plain paper" setting on your computer. Leave the print to dry. Spray with fixative. When dry gently and evenly peel the fabric from the taped cardstock. The taped cardstock can be udes many times. Just be sure to cover the whole taped area with fabric so there are no mishaps inside the printer.
Enjoy!
Belinda
Cape Town

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