Whine & Caveat

This is a post script to my recent post about using CitraSolv to manipulate photos from National Geographic magazines.  My first experience with this process was late last week.  What I found early this week when I went to use the pages is that there was an oily residue on them...which made the ink come off on my fingers and smeared the designs on the paper.  After a bit of research into the matter with the good folks at CitraSolv, I realized that I had used too much of the liquid on the pages.  As in most things, less is more!

Yesterday I tried it again, this time using only about 1 teaspoon of CitraSolv between sets of photo pages (yes, I measured it so I'd know for sure).  And it worked perfectly!  So well, in fact, that I did three batches of pages yesterday afternoon.

It all happens rather quickly.  I would suggest though that while your stack of wet pages is marinating for 20 minutes or so, you leave it in the shade.  Once the sun starts drying out the pages, they'll stick together.

But after the initial marination, after you have pulled the pages apart, lay them on newspaper in the sun and they'll dry in less than an hour.

These photos are from yesterday's session.

Earlier this week, after realizing my error with the first set of pages and while waiting for the sun to come out again here on the North Coast, I experimented with printing the digital images I'd taken of the original pages. 

I printed a few images on paper to use in collage-making.  With some of the more dramatic images I'm getting now, with the newer pages, I would like to print some on fabric as well.

It might be possible to print on fabric directly from a wet marinated page.  I'd likely try this with fabric that had been pretreated first with either Bubble Jet Set or an acrylic medium or ground.  If any of you try this, let me know how it works!

There are still a few bags of handmade fabric scraps available on my Sales Blog -- blues, greens and yellow/golds.  If you're looking for unusual small pieces of fabric for a variety of projects, don't miss these.