Friday, July 30, 2010

Graphics Fairy

I only just recently discovered The Graphics Fairy, but I'm totally hooked.

She finds vintage images, scans them, cleans them up a bit (for visual clarity), and then offers them all to YOU, for FREE, to do whatever you like (mostly - see her terms).

Did you know, you can take a Xerox of something, say, this awesome image of a chair (I love chairs...),
(found here, on her blog) and iron it on to fabric?!?

Yup, you can. Seriously.
I've only done black and white. I'm pretty sure color doesn't work so well that way. But as there are so many cool images from old catalogs that were only printed in black and white, there's a lot of stuff you could do with this.
This produces a lighter image than the printed version, but it will be permanent.
You just need a fresh Xerox image (or any other toner-based print - meaning laser, not ink-jet), a hot iron, and some fabric. I've mainly done it on cotton (natural fibers work best, with a tight weave), but I'm eyeing this piece of cream-colored silk I found in the remnant bin at JoAnn's. It was seriously discounted, so I'm willing to risk it.
Your image will be reversed, of course. But, you can easily reverse the image, before you print it out, in programs like Paint, or other image software. Handy when there are words or numbers.

The Graphics Fairy also shows you how to put any printed image onto fabric here, using something called Citra-solv. I'd never heard of the stuff before, but I'm willing to try it, if I can find some locally.

If you try it, be sure you test it first, on a scrap, to make sure you're getting the results you want before picking up something more expensive to work with.

I'm going to print me out this dress form, and make it up into a pillow, probably just plain muslin, but with a fringe around it.

1 comment:

Jacque of All Trades said...

This is awesome! I can't wait to try it. Let me know if you find the citri-solv locally.