Designing A Pillow Cover

After wandering around in circles for a couple of days, I've found a direction. When we decided to open the showroom, I went on a pillow design frenzy and made 20 pillows. The fabric store down the road cuts up their sample books and sells them out of a grocery cart. The pieces are small, none larger than 15 x 15". There's usually enough of a single design to collage into 2, maybe three pillows. They're all gorgeous, one-of-a-kind and I'd buy one in a heart beat. One of these days I'll put them on Etsy.

Since I have 18 forms left, I've decided that my first design project is going to be an 18 x 18" a pillow cover. We do personalized, so that's why I was messing around with fonts. 

I found this fun tree design on iStock photo. iStock is a great place to purchase inexpensive illustrations that translate well into fabric block print designs. This one will cost me $15. I added the detailed leaves, figuring I could heat carve the detail just to add a little interest.

Since the design was so large, I printed it on a couple of sheets. Gluing the design to the craft foam paper back has turned out to be brilliant and solves my image transfer dilemma perfectly. There's quite a bit of detail here. I applied the glue more thoroughly and carefully on the second half and got better results. Giving it a couple of minutes to dry made cutting easier.

Half way through cutting the tree top, I found that my blade was crapping out. Don't be lazy and cheap like me and wait until your blade acts up. Replace your blade regularly. By the time it's dragging, it's already tearing the foam, leaving behind a lousy edge which means you'll have to carve that piece again, Sheree.

New blade? Seriously huge improvement. On the first half, I carved around each little branch and leaf. On the second half, I made a clean cut, chopping off the entire branch, cutting out the small sections separately. The long cuts were much cleaner than the smaller, stop and go cuts.

When I was through, I reassembled the whole thing on an 18 x 18"  paper pattern. I'm heading out to the fabric store now to see what I can find. Tomorrow, I'm going to print a pillow top.

How to Cut a Craft Foam Stamp

1. Join two sheets of self adhesive craft, leaving the paper back on one sheet.

2. Print your image right reading. Cut away excess paper. Glue stick the back of the image. Adhere face up to the paper side of the foam.

3. Using a sharp blade, cut out the image. Check the angle of your blade - keep it straight or angled slightly outward. When you're ready to mount the foam to Plexi, peel off the paper image, center and level the stamp on a mat. Center the Plexi over the letter and adhere. I used a regular kitchen rolling pin to apply equal pressure.

4. Do this 25 more times. Or, be like me and choose a wicked complex image, don't follow instructions and do it your way. Seriously.

 

How Not to Cut a Craft Foam Stamp

I just spent the last hour transferring and cutting out this letter. It did not go well. N is for Nope. Nay. Not.
This tangle of yellow foam is all I have left to show for my first cut and mounted letter. Any other person would have chosen a simple letter, but no - I have to pick one with skinny legs and 15 cutouts.

I printed my letter in reverse, cut away the excess paper and taped the image to the foam side of a single thickness of craft foam. Cutting out the actual letter with a relatively new Exacto blade was pretty easy. Cutting out 15 little sections took forever and the results were clearly the work of a novice.

The next step was to mount this floppy, sticky contraption onto Plexiglas. Fail. The industrial strength adhesive on the back of this batch of foam made handing, placing & repositioning out of the question. Any attempt caused stretching and tearing. I gave up, pulled as much foam as I could off of the Plexi, rolled it up in a ball and considered plan B.

This time, I printed the letter right facing and taped it to the paper side of two layers of craft foam. Made the large straight cuts. Wow. This is a nice, firm stamp. The skinny legs don't even flop. This thing will last forever and should be way easier to mount. Kind of like the pros have demonstrated during my research?

The next challenge was to cut these shapes and not ruin this gorgeous new stamp. I tried heat carving some scrap using two different tips. Both left a ragged edge and created a dubious trail of melt-smoke. I did figure out removing only one layer of foam would result in a recess deep enough to keep from filling with ink when rolled.

This time, I used a glue stick to adhere the reversed image to the foam side of the stamp. I cut through one layer (often grabbing two) then peeled off the cuts. Really, if I hadn't been too lazy to look for a new blade, this might have gone better. It took forever and while the results were passable, they were far from professional.

In our process, every imperfection in a stamp becomes part of the image. I may find that thick and opaque textile inks make this not matter, but I'd rather just learn how to cut a clean stamp.

Plan C:  A simple font. Right facing image attached to the paper backing with a glue stick. Two layers of craft foam. One sharp Exacto blade. TTYL.

 

Stamp Construction

I just spent the last hour laying out, cutting and mounting my first block.  I Photoshopped an image I found online, turning it into this simple black and white. One copy was taped beneath a sheet of  Plexiglas and set aside. The second was placed over a sheet of carbon paper and the foam side of a full sheet of adhesive back craft foam. Then I traced the whole thing with ball point pen.

 The carbon transfer was too light to photograph but dark enough to see, so I retraced the lines with ball point and cut away the extra foam. My cutting mat was the May 2012 issue of Money Magazine. I don't know why I get this publication. I don't have money and rarely sit still long enough to read a magazine. Either way, it was small enough to fit on my desk and spin, which turned out to be useful.

Using an Exacto knife with a newish blade, I cut along the lines and through the paper back. My first cut, the little curly on the top right was awkward and yielded a seriously back-beveled stamp. You can see it in the 4th image. Stamps with inward beveled edges are weak and won't leave a strong impression. Holding and spinning the foam with the blade pressed into the magazine gave me cleaner cuts and made it easier to follow the curves. However, my edges were still beveled.

On the fourth cut, I angled the blade toward the image and ended up with a really nice edge with a slight outward bevel. Now the pressure placed on the plexi back will transfer to all surfaces of the front of the stamp, resulting in a clean impression.

I peeled off the paper back and placed each section on the Plexiglas pattern. This is so cool - I'm making my first print block. I showed The Women in the studio and they said "Really? How come we didn't think of this!" We've had several such epiphanies in the last years.

Here's the mounted stamp. I wasn't particular about the details, this is a rough prototype good enough to test the concept. I'll need to re-carve all of the sections marked with an x. The cool thing about craft foam material is that when you screw up a section, you just cut another one. First print sample, coming soon.

Stamp Materials

At Museware Pottery, we make our own stamps. The process we use to transfer images to our pottery is very similar to block printing. The big difference is that each stamp is painted & handled individually.

Our first attempts at stamp production involved sending our black and white images out to stamp making houses and having them made into stamps. Wicked expensive, done by mail and slooow. Then I found Speedball Speedy Cut carving rubber. We used it to create this logo for the Mount Washington Hotel.

Speedy Cut carves like butter (you can pick it off with your fingernail) creates a wonderful impression and cleans up well. It even holds up to soaking. Image transfer is easy. Place an image from an ink-jet (laser won't work) print side down on the rubber. Squirt the paper with nail polish remover. Rub with a spoon. A reverse of your image transfers perfectly. It is somewhat fragile and shows signs of wear with long term use. We've remade many of our earliest stamps but still have many well preserved older stamps. Our very oldest have dried and yellowed, but still work.

One day I placed an order with Speedball and mistakenly ordered pink Speedy Carve rubber. We heart this rubber. It has all of the characteristics of Speedy Cut, but is not as fragile - you cannot kill this stuff. 

In 2009, I found myself an agent and entered the world of licensing design. A major giftware & home goods manufacturer wanted to license some of my best selling designs. Naive to the process, I thought I had to physically make each design they'd requested. Since the design request included new work not present in the Museware Pottery line, I had to figure out how to get the more complex designs in my head onto pottery. I purchased wicked expensive polymer stamp making equipment. Like thousands of dollars expensive. After spending money I did not have on equipment I did not need, I found out that all they really needed were digital files.

I knew nothing about digital design & didn't even know what jpeg or dpi meant. Got a scanner, brought images of our hand carved designs (painted on tile) into Microsoft Publisher - the only design program I'd ever used.  It was like fricken magic! There was my hand painted work, in my computer! I still remember the day I created my first digital design featuring my own hand painted elements. I have made fire! I taught myself Photoshop and started sending manufacturers jpeg images at 300 dpi. The machine gathered dust. We learned to use it a year later. It's an integral part of our business now.

Long story short, when I saw this Galbraith & Paul image, I knew exactly what I was looking at. I just have to figure out what material they're carving/cutting. I doubt it's rubber - that would be too heavy for blocks this scale. This much 1/4" rubber would weigh ton, making it hard to place with precision. Time to research.

Jenny Nelson of HomeSweet uses adhesive backed craft foam sheets to create her bold and graphic block print designs. One of her printing blocks contains hundreds of tiny tear shaped elements. Each was hand cut out of what looks like two sheets of craft foam. Cool. We know craft foam.

To get the feel for this material, I drew a simple design on the paper back of a single layer of black foam. I tried the lower left cuts using my smallest, sharpest scissors. I ended up with ragged edges and chopped curves. So I ditched the scissors and picked up an Exacto with a shiny new blade. The cuts were easy and resulted in clean lines.

Cutting a double thickness of blue foam with the Exacto was more than twice as hard, but could be mastered with practice. My first cuts were slightly beveled. A straight edged stamp gives a better impression and lasts longer. Some rough edges needed clean up.

I'm not convinced craft foam will yield the thin branches and delicate leaves of the Galbraith & Paul block, but think it could be perfect for larger, simpler elements.

Because block creation is so labor intensive, I have to wonder if G&P might be using a more "permanent" stamp material like unmounted lino block. I found this Golden-Cut Linoleum at Dick Blick. According to reviews, it cuts easier than the grey unmounted linoleum and holds up well after repeated use. It does curl when wet, but not when attached to Plexi. I'll look for something local, now that I know such a thing exists. Something tells me it's going to be a while before I produce any fabric.