Fun with the Sizzix

Rather a long time since I posted about dashing off to Urchfont to the Text. 21 group - or whatever our group is called. I keep getting told off for getting it wrong! We have been so busy with Lynda Monk's new book, 'Fabulous Surfaces', that I've had no spare time. We are nearly there now and hope to be at the printer next week.

Back to Urchfont - we had a wonderful few days concentrating on printing techniques. Jane Wild gave us a class and came up with some amazing ideas for everything from mono-prints to collagraphs. Needless to say, it was the latter that I was concentrating on, having upgraded the pasta maker for a Sizzix Big Shot Cutting and Embossing machine.
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Sorry about the strange angle, but you get the picture. It was so much easier than the pasta maker. It is designed to heavily emboss paper, so printing doesn't put a strain on the machine, as Wendy thought it might. I had to add a couple of pieces of felt to the platform that holds the plate and, when that was done, it gave perfect prints very easily, just gently rolled through. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

I made the plate, below, from textured wallpaper, scrim and kozo fibres, all stuck to mount board with PVA glue. Jane also introduced us to carborundum - a fine grit that you sprinkle on to PVA. It's great for texture.
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I have always used acrylics with a retarder for printing but Viv from Art Van Go recommended oil paints with a special printing medium mixed in. This gives you so much more time to work on burnishing the plate - the point where the excess paint is removed. These are my prints - sideways on as Blogger is having one of its turns!



What do you think?

Comments

The jacket worked really well, Heather – will show a pic of it next time. I’m thinking of selling it back to Marks as a designer special.

Ticks – Clive seems fine, thanks. You do have to be careful because deer ticks carry Lyme's disease, very nasty. We live on the edge of the forest so lots round here and, on the day it attached itself, we’d taken the family to the 'scruffy pub' down the road for lunch. This is right on the edge of the golf course and is in the woody bit. Other people have posh eateries in their golf courses but ours is cheap and tatty. The food and staff are lovely and the kids like the table football machine.

Smudge does have tiny ticks but Clive’s was huge. Perhaps they scale themselves to their victim.

Had a giggle about putting the tick killing stuff on Clive too – it doesn’t seem to work on Smudge.