diy rub-on transfers, emily's easy way

hokay. for these programs, the cd sleeves came pre, uh... sleeved, so i couldn't print directly onto them. i needed some kind of diy rub-on transfer to make my own design. i dutifully googled the process and pretty much came up with the same thing over and over: the hairspray technique. this involves spraying an overhead transparency sheet with hair gel and allowing it to dry, printing your desired image with an inkjet printer and allowing that to dry, spraying another layer of hairspray and (you guessed it) allowing that to dry, then commencing with the transfer. ok.

phase 1: i acquire (5) transparencies for less than two dollars at the campus bookstore. (in the end, one would have been sufficient, two the maximum necessary.) on the way home, i acquire suave hairspray. not gel, which may or may not have been a factor.

phase 2: my computer is away for repairs and i antsily try a few transfers without re-reading the directions using an image on rob's computer. so i used regular hairspray, again, not gel. i did allow it to fully dry. the ink, however, flatly refuses to dry, even over several hours. i don't remember that i'm supposed to apply another hairspray layer, and i try the transfer. not wholly bad, but not good, either. definitely not of a usable quality. i decide to wait until i have my own computer back.

phase 3: phase 2 basically repeated but with the correct image on the correct surface (one of the cd sleeves). it's really not... working. the images are really faded. most of the ink seems to be staying on the transparency. i finally realize i'm supposed to add the second layer of hairspray, which i do, which doesn't make a difference.

phase 4: regroup. the interwebs tell me i can buy rub-on transfer paper. special paper you just print your image onto and ta-da! your rub-on is ready. we go to the local artisan/craftsman supply store where the girl at the counter has no idea what i'm talking about and from what appears to be a quaalude trance tells me how i can accomplish my objective with a chemical called xylene. i opt not to follow her advice. (for the time being. i've googled this to and for some projects, it holds promise.) we move on to michael's where they have even less of an idea of what i could be talking about and recommend staples. at staples, i finally give up and think "hmmm... iron-on transfers. who knows?" and buy the iron-on paper.

phase 5: right. iron-ons leave a big sticky glossy area wherever you put the paper down, and although ironing onto cardboard is surprisingly fire- and smoke-free, it is clearly not going to be the answer. pissed off, frustrated, and more determined than ever, i return to the transparencies. i try a side-by-side comparison: the full-on two-layer hairspray-image-sandwich ultra-drying time technique, and a straight-up, no-hairspray, instant-wet-ink-transfer technique. guess which prevails, hands down?

now, i could definitely have been doing something wrong. i could have. i didn't use the gel stuff, i might not have let things dry enough, maybe it's the material i was transferring onto - the cardboard is slightly ribbed and it was hard to get the ink into the little crevasses. i don't know. what i do know is that i tried it all and the only thing that actually gave me exactly the result i wanted was just printing straight onto the transparency, no other materials required. and here is how it goes:

1. get your image ready to print. important: you must reverse the image before printing it. yes, i know, but i managed to print mine the wrong way more times than my pride allows me to admit. the finished product will be a mirror-image of what prints.
2. insert your transparency into the printer and print.
3. print settings: i played around and decided that "best" was, well, best. i don't know what your printer's equivalent is. anything of "normal" or lower quality didn't produce quite enough ink, and "max dpi" was too much ink - it smeared coming out of the printer.
4. so, having printed your image, don't let it dry! now, really, a hefty amount of ink on a plastic sheet isn't going to dry all that quickly, so you're not exactly racing against the clock to get this done. you should work quickly, but my point is take your time in positioning the image and getting things ready. you're not going to ruin anything by not transferring in the first 30 seconds. oh, note: i found that if i waved the sheet around too much or held it vertical too long, the ink would run and smear a bit. keep it horizontal and still as much as possible.
5. position your image, ink side down, on whatever you are transferring it to. i used painter's tape (because that's what was handy) to hold the edges down for the transfer. second note: before giving it a good rub, i sort of just pressed the whole thing down. the initial blots of ink got soaked up by the cardboard that way, drastically minimizing the chance of smear & blur.
6. i used a wooden spatula for the rubbing. i'd tried a big ol' metal spoon per the hairspray tutorials, but it didn't have much surface coverage and seemed to scrape the transparency plastic all up. the spatula was nice - lots of even coverage to get the whole image at once, and the smooth edge didn't scratch much.
7. so just give the whole thing a nice, even, solid rub. it doesn't really take long. remember, the ink is wet, so you're just giving it enough contact to soak in.
8. peel the plastic away and you have completed your transfer - fantastic!

i mentioned that the cardboard on the cd sleeves was slightly ribbed. my first successful transparency-only transfer was on the reverse side of the failed iron-on transfer. at first, i thought perhaps that somehow the ironing had flattened out some of the ridges because it never went as smoothly on non-ironed parts. but i tried ironing a few more and it didn't make much difference. i finally realized that i had also rubbed and rubbed and rubbed several test images on the ironed side, too - that was what had smoothed out the surface. so for my project, i have to use the wooden spatula to rub the surface smooth before doing the transfer. once i do that, it works just beautifully. depending on your project, you may have to experiment with different surface treatment techniques to get exactly the effect you're looking for. have fun!

i'm back! and also programs.

long story short: tony danza (one of our cats) spilled water on my computer. no info lost, it works just fine so long as it's plugged in, but it no longer charges the battery. so my laptop is now essentially a desktop. the good news: i have a brand new macbook pro and i love it! so i was out of commission for a while, thus the silence. but now that i'm back in the computing business i've made up for lost time on my programs and i am so happy with them!!

one of the reasons i kind of wished i could have gone with tomatoes instead of poppies was because there was a certain feel i was after that seemed easier with tomato images... i was telling my sister m how i wanted something like the front of a seed packet, an old sort of hand-drawn vintage look. well, i found a poppy image that i thought might work pretty well. i've gotten much better with photoshop over the years and was able to tweak it just the way i wanted. we did decide to go with the cd sleeve option - i LOVE the way these are coming out!!

i will try to get a photo of the flower detail - they look just like they were done with colored pencils. i am absolutely thrilled with these. they are right in line with everything else we've done - the website, the invitations - with the poppies, the font, the minimalism. and i truly love love love the feel of them. once i finally figured out how to do the image transfer (separate tutorial post in the works), it's been going pretty smoothly, too.

so happy! and although we are using up some paper for this, i'm still counting it in our thrifty and eco-friendly category. here's the breakdown: $40 including shipping for the 50 recycled cardboard cd sleeves from an eco-friendly company. no paper used in the printing - they're printed on overhead transparency sheets and the ink is transferred to the sleeves. the transparencies are wiped clean and reused over and over and over again. i'm only using two sheets for them. used one sleeve to practice and make all my mistakes so i don't waste the others! not bad, i think. can't wait to post more when i get working on the inserts!

not my post

this post comes straight from ritzy bee - i'm not changing a thing, except to say: if i could change one thing about this whole wedding idea, i'd go back to the beginning and instead of poppies setting the tone, i'd use tomatoes. in fact, i still keep toying with the idea of just up and changing it. the colors are the same, still exactly what i want, and the season is perfect. tomatoes will be plentiful in oregon that time of year. i'm planning on having lots out for the park munchies. and so, of course, there was just the tiniest twinge of *i wish* when i saw this. oh well, who says tomatoes and poppies don't go fantastically together?!

tomāto, tomäto

Admittedly this post is a little out there...but it's Friday! We love the look these colorful, budget friendly tomatoes bring to event decor...be it a wedding...or a Saturday night summer dinner...

{Photo credits: 1+4 Snippet & Ink, 2+5 Ariella Chezar, 3 Martha Stewart, 6Brides.com}

menswear

with wedding on the brain, i've been perusing google image search, etc. for ideas/inspiration/just cuz. i came across this board on green wedding shoes (which was a new one for me and i quite liked it).

this is the overall style i envision for r on our nuptials day. i sent him an email with the photos, so we'll see if he agrees.

SUMMER!!!

i am sooooooooooooooooooooo glad to be done with school. ish. for the time being. yesterday should have been the last day but delays in paper-writing-ness changed that. so today around 1pm i finished the last of the quarter's requirements. there are no words to describe how happy i am to be taking a break from all of that.

sometimes i think it might not be so bad if i could just have my damn weekends. but that is never the case - there is always homework to do on the weekends. and my plants have been pissed at me for it for a long time. so today: gardening! garden garden garden garden garden! the porch may not look that impressive but that mother-in-law's tongue has been needing repotting for months. my poor dracaena in the back is slowly getting nursed back to health but for the last six months or so i've been watering him approximately... well, never. also, my wandering jew (next to the aloe on the wall) has stopped wandering. i don't know if his branches will ever come back. i can only hope.

incidentally: i loathe snails and aphids. this afternoon i ripped out a huge patch of nasturtiums that had been thoroughly and utterly devoured by aphids. these guys are new (only planted a couple of months ago if you can believe it!) but the buggers are already on 'em. i tried safe soap on the other ones but i think it was too late... i will not lose this row! i read that a lot of people apparently use nasturtiums as 'trap plants' - the aphids love them so much that they just leave everything else alone. these guys are right next to my zucchini and some strawberries, and we've got tomatoes on the other side of the yard. i considered going the trap route but dammit i want all my plants. so i went on the attack today. we'll see what happens. i love my plants!

simple rustic

our wedding will take place at a park in oregon, in september. it'll only be mid-september but i'm still expecting a certain fall *twinge* to the air, and since it'll be at a big park shelter, i want to go with the whole rustic feeling. i'm planning just a few touches here and there instead of going all out with actual decor or any real theme.

our plan is to spend several hours in the park with lawn games, homebrew, and light nosh and then head off to dinner elsewhere later in the evening. so for park food, i want to keep it light, seasonal, and with no preparation necessary. i'm thinking i'll drag my sisters to the farmer's market early in the day and stock up on seasonal fruits and veggies, find some good bread and cheese, and lay it all out for people to snack as they wish. so i loved what i saw at ritzy bee this morning:

the shelter doesn't allow us to put up any signs, so i'd already been planning on a chalkboard for any necessary announcements, such as "what's this food?" Have i mentioned we're doing an ultra-budget wedding? For our own house, a while back i found peel & stick reusable 8 1/2 x 11" sheets of chalkboard paper on Amazon. i was planning on getting another package of those (somewhere around $12 and i'm betting i can find even cheaper) and (maybe) some funky picture frames, and setting those up around the food. seeing a photograph of this done makes me want to do it even more! i love the straightforward simplicity of this. r and i are very against frills, frilliness, and frillarity, especially for our wedding. clean lines and a few punches = much more our style.

long time, no post

lately, the only thing i hate more than school (and people) is dinner. specifically, trying to come up with something to eat for dinner. and r is feeling the same way. so between the two of us, it's a disaster.

what do you want to eat?

i don't know. what do you want?

i don't know, either. something.

yeah, something.

well, like what?

i don't know. i don't care.

well, i don't know, either.

it's awful. so i love this seasonal ingredient map from epicurious:

it's pretty straightforward - you just click on the month and your state and it gives you a list of what's fresh that month. obviously, this will vary from oh, say, san diego to san francisco, but the overview is still nice. but the great thing is that each food links to recipe ideas and info about how to shop for and prepare the produce.

i'm thinking i'll just keep the list up on our chalkboard so that we can try to center our meal ideas around what's in season right now. should help keep us eating fresh and, ideally, what's in season is also what's cheaper, so i can test that theory, too!