This is a bit of shameless reblog, but it is so cool I had to share…. I am not even sure if I can get this paper in the UK but I will endeavour. The post comes from the fantastic Apartment Therapy and the lovely photos are by Ashley Poskin.
Homemade Holiday Gift Idea: Make Custom Temporary Tattoos
Personalized temporary tattoos make the best little stocking stuffers or secret snowflake gifts. Create your own artwork, or find clip art online, and simply print them out on specialized temporary tattoo paper. It’s a fun way to spice up the holidays and pull a fast one on grandma.
Design software (Photoshop or software provided by paper company)
Tools
Color printer
Water
Washcloth
Scissors
Burnishing tool ( a spoon works great!)
Instructions
1. This first step is the most time consuming, as it requires quite a bit of surfing around the web for art and/or creating your very own one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Once you’ve collected the art you’d like to use, you can create your template in a few different ways. I made a new document in photoshop by choosing “US Letter” which comes out to be 8.5″x 11″ at 300 pixels/inch. I then created multiple layers by dragging all the images I wanted to print onto the sheet, arranging them until they all fit perfectly.
If you don’t want to mess around with Photoshop, most temporary tattoo paper companies will provide free downloadable templates to use, just check the back of the package for download instructions and you’re on your way.
2. My packet came with two sheets of thick, white temporary tattoo paper, and two adhesive sheets stuck to green film. The white glossy paper is what you’ll send through the printer, face up. Wait until the ink has dried completely before moving on to the next step.
3. Remove the adhesive sheet from the green film and press it firmly over the printed designs, starting from the top and working your way to the bottom. Work carefully as the adhesive will cling to anything it touches.
4. Transfer the adhesive from from the top sheet to the white paper using a burnishing tool such as a wooden spoon, popsicle stick, or scraper tool. It’s only necessary to burnish over the designs, don’t worry about the negative space.
5. Cut each design from the sheet, then go back and cut around each design in detail, leaving as little negative space as possible. The area with a design does a great job of masking the film that transfers to your skin, but any space that doesn’t have a printed design (significant space around your tattoo) will show up and look kind of filmy. Definitely not rock ‘n roll.
6. Apply the tattoo to your skin by pressing it face down (paper side up) and holding it in place with a wet cloth for 20-25 seconds. Once set, the paper backing will slide off easily.
After a nail biting queue online, I managed to procure tickets to visit the Art sensation that is Dismaland, put on by Banksy in Weston-Super-Mare. This exhibition was not only his own work, but he curated many other global contemporary artists for the show.
I love Banksy; he is irreverant, political and a perfect commentator on society today using what I see as bleak humour and wit to get his point across. Plus he is also a local boy and keeps his main exhibitions in this area of the UK, so it was not a long way to go, (thanks v. much Banksy, as there were people there today that I spotted from European countries who had come all the way just to see the exhibition).
I have in the past built CMS websites for people, schools and businesses but purely as a hobby/sideline and via word of mouth, and last week I was commissioned to come up with a design for a very simple and clean website by a private Art Dealer that I encountered in Bristol.
His speciality is Modern & Contemporary Art, with an emphasis on street art. He has some very impressive and works by contemporary artists that he collects and sells; Damien Hirst, Banksy, Antony Micallef, Peter Blake, Chris Ofili, Laure Prouvost and many more. It is an eclectic mixture of original artwork, prints, sculptures and ceramics. It was a really nice project to get my teeth into as he has some amazing artwork that I could study for both the website and my art workshops with children.
This weekend I have been buzzing about all over the place. Distressing samples for mirror makeovers, going to a lovely wedding, then going to my first gallery exhibition opening, and ending today with a gargantuan task of upcycling the biggest mirrors I HAVE EVER SEEN!
PAINT EXPERIMENTATION:
On Friday, with my friend and accomplice-in-paint Claire, we tested out loads of samples for some huge mirrors that need to be revamped. They are for a lovely shoe and boot shop Ted&Muffy who are launching in Bath, London and Edinburgh very shortly, and the designers asked for some samples with combinations of blues, greys and whites. They asked if we could come up with a crackle glaze finish on very ornate carved mouldings. We started by testing the two colourways on a plain frame with chalk paints; Napoleonic Blue with Old White on top, and Anthracite with Original white on top:
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To do a crackle glaze, you paint your base colour first, and then when it is dry you paint a coat of glaze on top of that. After 30 mins when it is seemingly dry/a tiny bit tacky, you paint the top coat on top of the glaze. This has to to be done in one coat/brush sweep only or the crackle glaze sort of mutates and fails. It is great on flat planes of wood etcetera, and the results show immediately.
Top coats crackled
Blue with old white on top
Grey with original on top
So, this all looked good. BUT….. we were going to try and have to do the one sweep motion on really heavily carved frames, and so we tested a more ornate frame to see how it worked… it was really quite depressing!
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So, the conclusion was that the glaze cannot work in any ornate areas, as if you work the paint into the mouldings then the sweeping one pass motion is lost/impossible and the paint looks like it is curdled, not cracked.
CHIN UP! we thought, in a very British gung-ho fashion. So I decided to do some samples using rubbing back distressing rather than crackle glaze on some more mouldings. Even when I got a bit clumsy and this happened, I kept my stoic British face on…
Chalk paint on deck, that was a bugger to get off….
The next mouldings again used the same colour combinations but I did the typical 2 coats, sand back method with the chalk paints, and wax to finish them off…, and I did a variety to send off the the shop designer to see:
Varied thicknesses of top coats
Details of soft and hard rubbing back
The different results
Using a tinted wax versus a clear one
So off the samples went, and I got changed and went to a….
WEDDING!
I love weddings, and this one was for my friends the lovely Aaron and Jenny in the most beautiful location of Priston Mill near Bath. It is an amazing place with a choice of venues, all hidden in a valley reached via wiggly lanes. The sun was out, and it was one of those beautiful English evenings. We sat in a beautiful garden to start, with the most amazing herbaceous borders. The wedding had sunflower themed floral decor everywhere There was a brilliant self-photo booth with a polaroid camera, props for the models and a pin board to mount them onto. Little signs were everywhere, and it was just perfect…
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EXHIBITION LAUNCH
The next morning my family and I headed down to Cornwall for the launch of Art & The Map of Cornwall where I had a piece in a group exhibition at POP Gallery. This is a great gallery which has very cool street art. All the artists showing were given a very old map of Cornwall and asked to go away and turn it into something new which referenced Cornwall. The launch exhibited the original artworks, and limited editions of them are available from POP gallery. I did a piece called the ‘Great Wave of Cornwall’, mentioned before in this post, and the original painting had already sold by the time of the launch. There are prints for sale via POP gallery, and they are all hand-finished. I also sold another large print that night, so it was a great start to the show for me! Here is the final original artwork piece…
There were some amazing pieces from the artists and everyone had such different ideas…. Here are some of my favourites:
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We them stayed in Cornwall for the night, and meandered back yesterday after a lovely Brunch in Wadebridge.
BACK TO THE MIRRORS….
So this morning I headed to Ted&Muffy’s store to start work on the mirrors. The decision was made to not crackle glaze as it just was not working in the corners and on the mouldings, and to paint the mirrors in a very similar shade to the walls of the shops which are all being totally redesigned. I had a bit of shock when I saw them in the flesh…
Gulp… really quite huge
There are 4 mirrors, and they are at least 7 feet tall! The moulding is even more intricate than I expected in the flesh, (although I had seen photos), so I was really pleased we were going with a simple decorative scheme. I cracked on and had mixed up Dulux eggshell colour code 10BB83014 which is a really pale, pale grey and suits the decor of the shops. As it is an eggshell, it also needed a primer to go on first to the frames. I took the precaution of masking out all the glass, as eggshell is really runny to work with compared to chalk paints which I usually use, and I thought I might make a bit of a mess otherwise…
Before and after priming
It is the MOST fiddly painting to do, serious dabbing and stabbing to get into all the nooks and crannies, and there is also a beading around the frame almost like pearls on a string which took ages to get the paint behind. However, here they are primed:
Masking tape and newspaper to protect from splashes, all primed now
The primer has definitely saved me a lot of time, and the first coat of eggshell went on next:
Those are REALLY fiddly to paint but starting to look good
I will finish them tomorrow, and when the shops are launched I will post up how they look in their intended scheme.
But for now I shall be having a night off to rest as it has been really hectic but really fun over the last few days.
Emma Kayne 