look what i can do

[hydrozoa.livejournal.com]

i just tried a xylene-based blender pen to transfer a photocopied image to fabric. here's a little tutorial, for anyone who hasn't done it before.



the blender pen is chartpak brand, about $3.00 at an art supply store. i guess chartpak is the only brand that makes xylene pens, so don't bother with tombow or the others. you want the clear one, not the colored ones.



i used a design that i had seen pasted to a wall in chinatown months ago, photographed, then enlarged in photoshop, printed out, and photocopied. according to the internet, printer ink won't work--xylene will only transfer toner from a photocopier.



i trimmed the margins so that i could lift the paper up and peek at the progress without disturbing the position too much. then i taped the design down and colored it in with the blender pen, using heavy, overlapping strokes so that the toner would get rubbed in real good. oh, also, i opened the window cos xylene is stinky and will allegedly asphyxiate you.



my camera battery was running out--it's darker than it looks in the picture. not as dark as the photocopy, but it still looks awesome. next time, i'll burnish it a little longer.





i'm pretty happy with the result and i can't wait to experiment some more. also, here's a site about blender-pen transfers, with a bunch of other stuff that you can do with them:

http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/imageblend.html

yay.