Printing Patterns With Your Laser Printer?

[Vikti]

Vellum works good with an ink jet, I use to do it all the time until work got in my way.

Damon

[iwannabeacowboy]

What I do is streching the glad wrap around tightly and I use tape on the back...Then turning it right and tape the printed pattern onto that. It works out really good for me and I don't have to try to find "the right stuff" way up here in the north:-)

Tina Very good idea, I never thought about glad wrap. It now saves me one step in the process of getting the pattern on the leather. Thanks

charlie

[Tina]

Tina Very good idea, I never thought about glad wrap. It now saves me one step in the process of getting the pattern on the leather. Thanks

charlie

You're more than Welcome and I wish you good luck with the "new" material :-)

[TjMcDaniel]

I love creating patterns on my computer. I print the pattern on Vellum paper and then apply packing/shipping tape to the back (have to be careful on larger projects with lines from the overlapping tape, transferring onto your leather) I've also thought of using a thin contact paper.

[SimonJester753]

I used plain white paper for a pattern of metal spots on a dog collar. I oiled the paper, which made it translucent and kept it from moving around.

[JohnBarton]

we just use plain white paper and trace it using a ball point pen with no ink. Works pretty good for us. Most of our patterns are one-offs drawn for just that customer and space so we don't worry too much about ever using them again.

[Luke Hatley]

Be very careful with "Ink Jet", you will get a stain on the leather that will not come off.

[Ferg]

Be very careful with "Ink Jet", you will get a stain on the leather that will not come off.

I bought 11 x17 inch vellum at Office Depot (In a tablet form), printed with Epson Ink Jet, works great but I wouldn't try to use it more than once. I simply place several copies of the pattern on one sheet if it will fit.

ferg

[Nighthawk]

Thanks for the reply! I may just give it a try. I wonder if you could just trace over regular white paper or if that doesn't wook too good?!

I've done that. It only seems to work well on small designs- ones that take too much time, not so well. The moisture leaches out of the leather and into the paper.

[Toddo]

I've been trying to find the best method for transferring images from my computer to the leather recently myself. I have some designs with some very thin lines that I want to be exact on the leather. I've decided that transfering the image by hand onto the tracing film and then again onto the leather is not accurate enough. You loose some accuracy each time you go over the design by hand. So I have been looking for a substrate to print on using my inkjet printer so that I can trace directly from the design onto the leather with the most accuracy.

BTW. I have found that using an exacto knife works very well in place of a stylus for tracing, but you have to dull the blade and point some with a file to that it won't cut through.

Here's what I've tried so far:

Regular white 20lb paper. - Not good enough for me. The fibers in the paper hang up your stylus or exacto knife. Makes a decent visible lines in the leather though.

Vellum paper. - It has a very smooth surface like the Tandy leather tracing film, and it's semi transparent, but the stylus will still bump around on paper fibers too. No good enought for me either. Also makes decent visible lines in leather.

Tandy Leather tracing film - I tried printing directly onto the Tandy plastic tracing film with the inkjet printer. It worked. It printed very sharp lines but... there is a major smudge problem. Inkjet ink doesnt dry well on a smooth unpourous plastic surface. So I tried to fix this by spraying artist fixative on it and then used a hair dryer to dry it. Worked fairly well. Thought I had the solution. But I saw that the fixative had degraded the color lines somewhat, somehow. The black ink stayed intact and sharp. And weirdly, the black lines didn't smudge after the fixative dried, but the fixative did not setup on the color ink and it would still smudge.

Next I'm going to try quick dry transparency film made for inkjet printers. I have this on order and is due to arrive in the mail soon:

I'm thinking it may be to thick to transfer the line properly to the leather but it's worth a try. It says quick dry so I should not have any problem with the ink smudging when I do the tracing.

All in all I think the Tandy Leather tracing film is the perfect material to trace over a design onto the leather. The smooth plastic allows the stylus to flow very smoothly when you trace the line and it's flexible so it indents into the leather well and makes a very visible line in the leather from the trace.

If the transparency film doesn't work that good then I have one last idea. I'm going to spray either artist fixative or matt finish polyeurothane on Tandy tracing film and let it dry real good to see if that will give the film a good surface for the inkjet ink to dry on. It might give it a slightly rougher/more pourous surface similar to regular paper so that it can dry up. I can even spray a little fixative over top of that if need be.

Edited February 3, 2011 by Toddo