Inkjet Printer Fun (and a giveaway!)
PhotoPaperDirect.com specialise in inkjet printer papers and were kind enough to send me and the Glasgow Craft Mafia some samples to test. Although I own a pretty great Epson printer/scanner/copier I don’t really print many products on it. It prints my badges and coasters, a lot of my packaging and of course lots and lots of postage labels. So I was keen to see what it could do. I chose A4 Light Inkjet T Shirt Transfer Paper and A4 Matt Vinyl Self Adhesive Sticker Paper to test and here are my honest opinions.
For the sticker paper, I tried two things. First up, something I’ve been needing for ages – ‘Look inside’ stickers. At craft fairs I have a sample of each card on display and you can pretty much guarantee that no-one looks inside the ones that have a design inside. Sometimes they look inside a blank one and then decide they must all be blank. So I designed a little round sticker in Illustrator and printed them off. The paper came with full instructions on dpi, printer settings and most importantly, which side to print on. They came out beautifully and look awesome on my cards. Yay!
I then collected together some of my characters and printed them for a set of stickers. At this point, I had a reminder that however good the paper, the outcome is only as good as your printer. Mine has an annoying habit of sometimes ignoring pieces of a design. It doesn’t do it often but it did it here (see the right side of the sprite below). Luckily only on one character and the rest were perfect – nice bright colours and a lovely smooth finish.
Finally, I moved on to the transfer paper. I was going to put a design on a tea towel but I couldn’t find the one I’d bought ages ago so instead I printed off some bees and tulips for drawstring bags. Again the instructions were great here, reminding me to print the designs back to front.
After cutting round each of my designs for a neater look, I placed them on the bag and got ready with the iron. I was a bit confused by the instructions which said the iron icons would turn brown when it was ready – the iron icons were brown when I started! However, it was pretty easy to see when it was ready as the backing wouldn’t peel off until it was done. Peeling off was the most fun part as there were my designs all colourful and shiny! They really did look great.
At this point, I discovered you had to fix the design by ironing with silicon paper or high quality printer paper and then peeling it off hot to remove the shine. Having no idea what silicon paper is, I tried printer paper which pretty much worked but a tiny bit of the design stuck and came off too. For the second bag I ironed for longer but it peeled off loads of the design, so for the final bag I tried greaseproof paper (supposedly similar to silicon paper) which was a complete disaster and got stuck to the design. By this time, I was boiling hot and called it a day.
I would definitely recommend the sticker paper and will probably try out some of the other varieties sometime soon. If I ever find myself with some silicon paper, I might give the transfers another go. It’s fine for a fun project but it’s not something I can see myself using for business – I’d rather pay someone to do it professionally than slave over a hot iron.
So, overall, it was a fun experience to try out some different things without worrying about minimum orders and unit prices and colour matching. I’m already thinking about the fun things I could make with magnetic paper or clear sticker paper.
And now the giveaway! I’ve got a set of stickers like the ones above to give away and I’ll throw in a few surprises too. Just visit the Craft Paper section of the PPD website and leave a comment here saying what paper you’d most like to try, or think I should try next. Giveaway closes at 6pm on Sunday 18th July and I’ll pick a winner at random.
Also, keep an eye on the Glasgow Craft Mafia blog as Emma from Pumpkinsputnik will be reviewing more products there soon and we’ll have some heavy weight greeting cards to give away.
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I’d like to try the magnetic paper, and I think that your designs would look great on it as well.
I would say the magnetic paper, I want to try that myself too!
jojoebi´s last blog ..I want one-
I’ve had problems with iron-on paper, no matter which kind I buy, or whether it’s old or new. I always end up with a “weathered” (putting it nicely!) look on my transfers. I will say that it’s easier to do the kind that are reversed (and thus, the backing of the paper is between your image and your iron surface) than the kind that you peel off and then transfer right-side-up, if that makes any sense.
As to silicone paper, here it’s sold as “parchment” paper in the baking aisle at the grocery store. It feels and looks like wax paper but is slipperier.
i would like to try the magnetic paper :D
i think you should also try the magnetic paper so you can make magnets using your cute designs, i would buy! :)
oh – the magnetic sticker paper looks like fun! I LOVE magnets!
I was just looking for personalised labels to stick to ring boxes but now I want to try the sticker paper and make my own! Great feature, I think a lot of supermarkets actually stock silicon paper where they used to have baking paper, Asda does I think, it tends to be white instead of brown.
I’d love to try the glitter transfer paper, or the laptop skin sticker! Both look like a lot of fun.