Thermofax Experiments

My mixed media life actually orginates in the quilt world.  Did you know that?  I was a mixed media art quilter first and foremost and then stumbled into art journaling and paper.  Happily stumbled.

While I don't sew as much as I used to, I still read some quilting blogs and often run into surface design techniques that I long to try out.  For years the art quilt world has been filled with Thermofax printing.  It's a type of screenprinting, usually done without a frame.  Screens are burned on a Thermofax machine.  I have wanted one forever, but pesky issues like space and money kept getting in the way.

But, about a year-and-a-half ago I bit the bullet and bought myself a Thermofax machine.  You've seen some of the prints on journal pages:

All of the figures as well as the black flowers on the third page were printed with Thermofax screens.

And you might remember this purse I made. 

The fabric started as white muslin.  I used Thermofax screens to create the beautiful colored patterns you see!

Monday night I got a bee in my bonnet and wanted to try printing with regular acrylic paint on paper instead of screenprinting ink.  Some of it was successful and some of it was not.

On the left is stenciling (using the Balzer Designs Cityscape stencil) and on the right, the face and the pink text were both done with a Thermofax screen.

You can see that the face is a bit blurry.  Regular acrylic paint is simply not as viscous as screenprinting ink, so it leaked.  I learned from my mistake, though, and you can see that the text is much less blurry than the face!

I also tried printing in multiple colors with my Neocolor II crayons:

Seriously fun!  (Watch for this technique in my "Getting Started with Neocolor II" online class!)

I also played around with making some itty bitty screens, like this one:

And here it is on these two tags...

...along with a host of other screenprints and a bit of stamping.

Here's a peek at some prints from far and close so you can see the texture:

I'm still experimenting and playing around trying to figure out all the different ways to use my screens!  My brain is whirring with all of the many possibilities!

Thanks for stopping by!