This afternoon was experiment day in the kitchen, and I don’t mean cooking. At the moment I have a variety of printouts and magazine clippings coated with various substances either laying around drying, soaking in ice water or baking in the oven. I am working on making some image transfers I can stick on things … trading cards and canvases, to be precise.

So far I have learned that ink jet printer and regular paper doesn’t work with acrylic paint, acrylic mediums or liquid polymer clay. Though if I don’t scrub off all the paper, the liquid polymer clay one did turn out sort of cool and usable. At the moment, the test subject in question is a clipping from National Geographic Magazine with the liquid polymer clay. We’ll see how that goes. I am also going to do a test with the same source material and acrylic paint/medium … depending on whether or not I get the results I am after with the polymer.

I want to try glossy and matte photo papers with all three substances as well, but my printer is running out of black ink, so it looks like further experimentation is going to have to wait. Probably a good thing. The whole house reeks of chemicals and whatnot, and Lin will be home soon. It’s Friday night which means it’s SciFi night … so there isn’t going to be a lot of artsy-crafty stuff going on later. No, Fridays are for being a couch potato and eating too much delivery pizza.

If all else fails, I can always just collage the paper onto the painting with glue and paint the edges down or transfer the image to fabric and do the same. Not exactly the look I was going for, but I don’t really feel like going somewhere just to get a few laser jet photocopies done for an image that’s only going to be about 4″x3″.

And I’m probably lying about not working on anything else crafty tonight too. I want to get started on my trading cards for this month. I’ve had a few ideas. I won’t be showing them to you until I send them out though, since they are supposed to be a little secret, so you’ll just have to wait.