Surface Magic a.k.a. day one of Art and Soul Hampton 2010

With the guidance and experience of our instructor Marie Otero we played with Golden Digital Grounds today. I had heard about them but for some reason thought it was more cumbersome than it was. Basically there are three similar but different products. One is clear gloss, one is white matte and one is for non-porous surfaces. If you can only afford one get the non-porous since it also works on porous surfaces. Find something to print on and prepare your surface by painting on it or just using the grounds. We used two coats of the grounds (drying in between each coat) and then attached it to a carrier sheet (we used cardstock). Set your printer settings for basic color and the type paper you are using and then print. We kept our setting at either plain or semi gloss.

Throughout the day I printed on magazine paper, tyvek, wall paper, joss paper, foil wrapping paper, handmade paper and a clear digital skin. Marie created the clear skins ahead for us by using multiple coats of the grounds on a plastic sheet without any paper. It creates a dreamy type look and worked well with a high contrast image with some white space.

Here's a photo at the end of the day of Marie and I with a photo of the inside of Bath Abbey in the UK that I printed on a magazine photo. Before printing I painted the surface with a bit of acrylic paint to push the magazine photo a bit into the background. Marie is a great teacher and her work is fabulous.

Until my next post,
Diane