PhotoEZ source

I am very happy to have an article in the March/April issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. It is on screen printing. The article does not give a source for the PhotoEZ. This is who I use. There is even a discount on this page. Just so you know, I buy my stuff just like everyone else does. I don't get anything if you buy anything from them. Just trying to pass along some savings and to give you a source since the article is out.

http://ezscreenprint.com/belinda.aspx

EZ screenprint is having a sale - last day!

http://ezscreenprint.com/ This the site where I get my stuff for stenciling on fabric. This is the last day of their sale. I was going to buy some refill sheets and I found that they were having a sale. Yes, I buy my stuff from them. It is not a hard thing to do. They have complete instructions.

response to PhotoEZ for tattoos

I don't see why you can't use them for that reason. I would think you would go with the HiRes sheets due to the nature of the sheets. HiRes is High Resolution. I would contact ezscreenprint.com and ask them to be sure though.

http://ezscreenprint.com/

reply to Crazy Airplane Builder

I don't see why it wouldn't work. I have emailed ezscreenprint.com. I will post when I get an answer. You might want to contact them yourself. They have a phone number listed on their website. You can call and ask for a small sample of the hi-res Photo EZ stencil. Try it and see if it will work.

PhotoEZ on Sale!

I don't get anything from this, I am just passing this on. Quite a few of you were interested in how I make my stencils for fabric. This is a lower cost alternative to other silkscreen methods. I have done some research and some of them are close to $1000 or more just for the machine. The cost is in the actual stencil for the PhotoEZ process. It is worth it though because you get to use the stencil over and over. Just be sure to clean it right away so the mesh does not get clogged permanently (like how my paintbrushes get ruined with dried paint).

I just got an email that this supplier of the PhotoEZ materials and kits are having a sale this week. Just in time for Xmas. Time to get your hint ON! Here is the site. You can always email me if you have any questions on how to use it. The websites are very informative with instructions. You will find previous posts on my blog with samples. Just put in PhotoEZ in the Google search in the right column of my blog.

http://ezscreenprint.com/

October BJP

This is my contribution to the Bead Journal Project for October. I am down and out with strep and other fun stuff. I sleep, whine, and then bead a little in my comfy chair. I enlarged it so you could see it. It is in that diamond shape that I so love. Yes, it is puffy. I can sew that onto something if I want. There is a chipboard back. The fabric is a piece of scrap from when I used my PhotoEZ silk screen stencil. No, they are not giving me anything to tell you that it is their stencil. I get emails asking me how I did the stencil and who I got it from. Just anticipating the question. The swirly detail shows up a lot better on the scan than on the real thing.

PhotoEZ posts

Someone asked me for more information. I think you will find everything you need to know about PhotoEZ silkscreening from my previous posts. It is really easy to make and to use as a stencil on various fabrics. Email me if you have any more questions. B


http://alteredbelly.blogspot.com/2008/08/photoez-observations.html

http://alteredbelly.blogspot.com/2008/08/photoez-stencils.html

http://alteredbelly.blogspot.com/2008/08/silkscreened-silks.html?showComment=1219679940000

http://alteredbelly.blogspot.com/2008/08/my-first-two-silkscreened-pieces.html?showComment=1219680600000

Making more stencils

I got a burst of energy on Saturday and created some more stencils using the PhotoEZ stuff. It was so easy and fun! I put some paper down on the ping pong table so they could dry. I used my iPhone to take the picts. Some of them are blurry because I was standing on the couch to get a better angle on the picts. Yeah, unsteady hands when toppling off the couch. I drew the little fish skeleton and heads myself. It was quite fun. That was the extend of my art self this weekend. I did make a few art necklaces to be sent out to other people. That only took a little while though. I did sit and see a couple of totally horrible movies. I am still feeling a bit under the weather. The sinuses are still wonky. DH got sick and then my 5yro daughter. So, I got a bit of that with what I already had. Now, about half of kids in class are coughing all over the place. I can't win!

My first two silkscreened pieces

If you look at the picts, you can see how brilliant the colors are and how they are a bit mixed. This was the very first ones done while the stencils were still pristine. There are several silkscreen posts that follow this one. My observations are the last post.

Silkscreened Silks

This was way too much fun. I thought I might have a problem with the silks because they are much lighter and more flimsy than the other fabrics that I used. It was just as easy. I figure that if Pokey could do it, then I could give it a try.

Silkscreened silk

Here are some bits and pieces of silk fabric that I had left over from projects or that people sent to me. I will use these mostly as a top piece with something underneath it. Might do a bit of sewing on this as well. The top pict looks a little warped because it slid on the scanner. Keep going, there are more silkscreen posts.

Silkscreened Fabric

Here are some of the background that I did today. Mostly, these are scrap pieces that I got from other people. We traded stuff with each other. The trick is to hold the fabric still while doing the actual squeegee'ing. I used some clips to hold down the fabric and stencil onto a large piece of particle board. You can read my observations a couple of posts down. The next post shows you what the actual stencils look like when I was done.

PhotoEZ stencils

Here are the 3 stencils I made today. Yes, they are a bit discolored because I did not scan them while they were pristine. They worked great. You can see from the above fabric samples where the fine line text stopped working after the first couple of squeegees because the paint clogged it up. BTW, save the acetate that comes on top of the stencil sheet. You can use it later to separate the sheets for storage. It still may be a bit tacky or you might have missed a touch of paint. Prevents it from sticking to each other.

The next batch will be smaller stencils. I will section each sheet off. I want to be able to layer patterns and colors so I can mix as I please. This was a lot of fun.

PhotoEZ observations

I am downstairs with my kids watching Nim's Island right now. I wanted to write this down before I forgot what I wanted to write about. I got the PhotoEZ a couple of days ago, but it was cloudy yesterday. I could not do the stencil without direct sunlight. I wanted to do it on Friday but we spent the day at LegoLand. I will blog about that later. I am still sending picts from my iPhone to my computer.

I made 3 screens today. It said on the website to use 84 brightness paper. It also said that the 88 brightness paper from WalMart would work. Guess where I was yesterday? Yes, I stopped off at WalMart to get my son some Legos. The LegoLand only had a limited selection and they were outrageously priced. Back to PhotoEZ. If you don't know what it is, it is a simple of way of making silkscreen type stencils. You can do the same with a thermofax machine (tattoo artists use the same printer). They are expensive though - about $1000 or more even for the refurbished ones.

The cost is not in the kit itself. The cost is in the stencil sheets itself. I got the starter kit (not the hires one though. HIRES mean high resolution. You only need that for very detailed screens). The standard kit will work fine. Buy some extra papers while you are at it to save yourself shipping costs. The 2" squeegee (sp?) works fine. It gave me a lot of control when I was applying the fabric paint. While you are at it, you can also buy their plastic canvas. You may have seen it in the craft stores. It is a plastic grid for embroidery, cross-stitch, or something like that. The plastic grid does not come with the kit.

The first one I did was using a sheet of the 88 brightness copy paper from WalMart. I juiced up my black StazOn pad and stamped images randomly on the paper. Make sure it is nice and black. The second screen was done with die cuts that I had gotten at the Scrapbooking Expo. I bought the die cuts specifically for making stencils. You need to make sure the die cuts are rather thick (but not too thick). If the die cut is really thin, then color with a black marker like a Sharpie before making your screen. The 3rd screen was done using some number stamps and some text stamps. I will use larger, broader text stamps next time because some of the fine lines in the text clogged up after the first couple of go-arounds.

Give yourself about a 1/2" margin all the way around the edges. You need the margin to clip down your stencil to the fabric when you are applying the paint. You don't want to go over the stencil and get random paint on your fabric unless that is your intent. The clip gets in the way. I did some of my stencils to the edge and that was kinda a waste.

Fine lines on the stencil will get clogged with paint after the first couple times you use the stencil unless you wash the stencil out after each piece of fabric. I colored several until I cleaned it. The fine lines were lost but the more broad lines and larger areas were fine. Make sure your lines are more broad and dark so your stencil comes out.

I used Jacquard Textile paints and Lumiere metallic paints. I found the easiest way to get the paint onto the stencil is to pour a little onto a paper plate. I picked up a bit of paint with the squeegee and scraped it onto the stencil with the fabric underneath it. I actually squeegee'd a few different colors on top of each other. My painting surface was my dining room table. I put a plastic tarp on the floor so my fabric could dry. I used some light colored batiks, silk scraps, and some dyed muslin with my stencils. I laid the fabric out flat on a large piece of particle board. I put the stencil on top. Two corners of the stencil touched an edge. I used clips to make sure they pretty much stayed in place when I was squeegee-ing. When I was done applying the layers of fabric paint, I took the clips off and lifted the stencil off. I was able to put on 2-3 stencils on a piece of fabric at once. I put the stenciled fabric on the tarp to dry. Will iron later to heat set it. I did not bother to clean the stencils until I was all done.

I cannot believe how easy it was to do this. I put the kit out on my back deck for 5-6 minutes in the morning. When it was around noon, I did it for about 5 minutes. I soaked it in water with the shiny side down for 15 minutes. I gently rubbed the ghost areas to get rid of the excess emulsion. I let it soak some more and gently rubbed the excess green stuff off until it looked clean. Just look through it in the window or bright light. Do the same when you are cleaning it. I checked it in the sunlight to make sure there was no excess paint left on the exposed areas of the screen. I laid it on paper towels to dry after I cleaned the paint off.

The instructions are easy to follow. Just make sure you actually follow the directions on how to put the layers together to expose the screen. The exposure time and how to clean the stencil instructions should also be followed. I did use the plastic grid to clean the stencil. When you are letting the stencil dry in the sun, put a piece of paper towel between the plastic grid and stencil so the stencil does not get grid lines on it. Everything you need to make your own silkscreen included in the kit except for artwork, paint, and the plastic canvas (grid).

I LOVE the results. I cannot believe how easy it was. I will do more experimenting and will make some smaller stencils so I can layer images and colors. This is definitely a product to get if you want to silkscreen on fabric. I will be making some groovin' backgrounds with fabric. Yeah, I guess I could do this with paper as well. Will post picts of my screens and silkscreened fabric when I get upstairs. Thank, Pokey, for being the impetus for this very fun new thing. I could stand there all day and silkscreen fabric. I could experiment all day and still not do exhaust all the possibilities in swirling in my mind.

This is where I got it from: http://ezscreenprint.com/

Way cool fabric from Pokey

Pokey Bolton, publisher of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts, recently had a blog giveaway. She had some thermofax stencils that she used on some fabric. She went outside and screenprinted a bunch of fabric. Then, she gave it away! So cool. I was one of the lucky winners.

http://quiltingartsblog.com/

They all look so great that I don't want to do anything with them. At the same time, my mind is working furiously thinking of things that I can do with them. I will get to it in the next couple of weeks, maybe.

I would love to get a thermofax machine to make my own stencils for fabric but cannot afford it. They run about $1000 - refurbished slightly less. Maybe someone out there knows a tattoo artist who will sell you one for a cheap price. I did find an alternative that was not so pricey. I read about PhotoEZ and StencilPro. I did some research and found that most people were very successful with it. I will give it a try soon and let all of you know. Wouldn't it be great if I could do what Pokey did?!

http://www.cbridge.com/

htt://ezscreenprint.com/

You can find the PhotoEZ at both websites. The StencilPro is available from the cbridge website. Let me know if you have tried it and like it.