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Wednesday 24 October 2012

Hand printed wrapping paper

This is one of the items on my to-do list and has been for way too long. Now I know that I could screen print these and have had the opportunity to do so in the past but I want to print them in a different way. Either by hand with small size stamps, carved from either lino or the softer block option (so much easier to cut!) or by creating a repeat pattern from a drawing scanned to computer using photoshop. 
So my question to you is have you done this? and if so to what success?
My other question on this subject is where to get the right size paper from. I know that on average I'm looking at paper sized around 50x70cm. So where would I be able to purchase such sized paper? and where, if I wanted to get a design printed, would do this/print such a size?
Your help on this question would be much appreciated. I have thought that I could get an A3 size printer at home to do limited runs, as I don't want to print reams and reams of the same design(!) but A3 paper falls quite a long way short size-wise at 29.7x42cm and I'm guessing I'd need to stock up on inks as well!

5 comments:

Lynn Holland said...

Hi Kirsty
Have you tried Melissa and Dougs Easel Paper Roll. You can buy it on Amazon.
I've used similar and hand printed using lino cut or stamps.
I know a lady who makes stamps if you need a contact for them.
Lynn :)

meplusmolly said...

Thanks so much Lynn! I shall take a look, would be prefect for hand printing and just cutting to length, just computer print to look at now, fab! :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Kirsty,
thanks for dropping by my blog - nice to have opinions from a fellow textile designer.
I love your blog! Just to let you know - I've pinned two of your images onto my Pinterest boards...the paper leaf and circle garlands.
Goodluck for the rest of the BYW bootcamp course!
Meg

Anonymous said...

Hi Kirsty,

Your blog is lovely, Lynn kindly indroduced me. I design lino cut and hand stamped prints and if I am doing wrapping paper I use a large roll of brown paper. For me I love the colour and texture as it is thicker than normal paper so is more robust for wrapping. I get rolls that are 70 - 75cm wide and as they come in 4m + you can cut it to the size you require. I hope this is useful. Good luck and it would be great to see what you do.
Lucy

Anonymous said...

Hi Kirsty, thank you for visiting my blog, it is always nice to meet fellow crafters. The softer lino is much easier to use as the cutters slide and glide into it a lot better and i think it can give lovely curving shapes easier where as the harder lino I find that it is easy for the cutters to jam and slip and ruin the design unless you are careful but i think the harder stuff will give you finer detail. It all depends on your design but if you haven't used lino for a while I would use the softer type, it is what I mainly use as i like quite bold designs with lots of outline. Just play around with the different sized cutting tools and have some fun.
Lucy