Thursday 12 March 2015

Image Transfer mutterings vol 300. . - So much for Dye Sub


Well, after meaning to get round to trying out my dye sublimation heatpress on baked polymer clay for ages, I finally tried it out today. 'Disappointing' is the word. For a start, the poly clay stuck to the top 'platen' of the heat press and had to be hurriedly scraped off. Then the paper stuck to the clay during the dye sub process and had to be soaked off. And once everything had dried out from that it all looked extremely dull and uninteresting.


I tried Renaissance wax on top but that wasn't much better. I tried fine sandpaper, to see if I could sand down to something stronger, as the image would be part of the clay, but it was only fractionally better.
The left hand one is sanded and waxed and buffed. It's sort of OK, but not really worth the effort.



I was perplexed because on the right substrate, in this case an mdf coaster coated in a special pvc related substance, the image is bright and pretty clear. Polymer clay should have the right chemical make up to take dye sub inks. . .

So, forget dye sub, says I. I might try cutting up an mdf coaster and dye subbing onto the bits in order to make small image tile things, but that feels a bit like cheating, as I wanted to find ways of getting better images onto Polymer Clay. . .
Oh well. . .


At least the mice in the garden were on my side. Look what they left for me to find under the damson tree. These would be fun to incorporate into some kind of jewellery I think.


And these, they left were left under the cherry tree.
Thanks mice ;-)

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