First attempts!

[chiggins]

I jumped in this week, this is lotsa fun. I don't see how any disc in my house will survive with its stamp intact after this.

I've been collecting materials for a few months here and there, few tools from the art supply place, some vinyl off eBay. Last week I made a rudimentary light table, got the last few items and this week I finally got to put it all to use.

Special note of thanks: To anyone that's posted tutorials and logged their experiences, thank you. Also, the night before I made my first cut, I watched ChUcK & some call me...tim?'s 101 and 102 tutorials again all the way through. By the time I was ready to get to it, I felt more confident at every stage since I knew where things were headed, and I remembered a bunch of details I would've forgotten if I hadn't done the refresher. Nice work on the video's fellas, and thank you.

First shot was a green Champion 11x Teebird of the translucent variety, seasoned but with a pretty clean flight plate:

My lines weren't perfect, and I dragged some of the islands by cutting harder than required. I also made initial contact with the vinyl a little off-center and had to go with it. But the transfer was perfect, no bubbles, no bleeds, and I'm delighted with how it came out.

The next attempt was applied to an orange S-PD, thrown but also in pretty good shape on the top. The black zombie stamp left a couple hairlines in some spots, it was definitely a deeper stamp than the Teebird. But the knife started feeling natural, the transfer was dead-on, and the dye came out great. I have no complaints.

I'll post my step-by-steps and lessons learned later on, but I wanted to get these up and say thanks to the artist-slash-dye-pushers here for givin' me a new pursuit for my wife to roll her eyes at. And then I'll have to go back through the library here, I think it's time for some color.

 

[plshrk]

For first attempts those are great!

 

[ChUcKyZ]

Skills, man, skills! That black you achieved is seriously dark. That's the way I try to make all mine look right there.

edit: I went back and actually read the post instead of just looking at the pretty pictures. Word, glad the videos could help!

Centering the image can be quite the hassle. I try to minimize the amount I'm off by applying the vinyl over my light table. I place a sheet of paper with a disc-sized circle printed on it down first, then the masked vinyl sticky side up and I get it aligned exactly how I want it to be on the disc, then I place the disc on next, standing directly over the circle so I can position the disc as centered as possible.

Not perfect, but good enough that I've never been tempted to rig up something more accurate.

 

[chiggins]

Third shot: retro'd Harley Quinn on a beefy 11x Champ Teebird:

• This started as a clear champ with a yellow burst in the middle and red tie-dye on the outside.
• The first mask shaded the face and puffballs
• The second mask was for the black dip first and then the red
• The third mask did the eyes in blue
• The fourth mask did the gray for the eyebrows and lower lip,
• I did one more mask to outline the puffballs in gray.

Super fun dye, lotta lessons learned on this one: cutting circles (lesson: I'm not good at it yet), transferring, multiple colors on the same mask, registering multiple masks, tints on non-white plastics, bubbles on exposed areas, keeping islands from floating on the backing, even how may burner grates it takes to get the pan far enough away from the flame on low to keep the dye at 120F. I also had my first experience installing a mask that took a fair amount of effort to cut and weed, taking a good look at it, and realizing it had to be re-done and pulling the whole thing.

If I do this one again, it'll be after I've gotten better at pulling long curves and on white Star plastic. But I learned a lot, had a great time pullin' it together, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Dyin's pretty damned fun.

 

[whridlsoncestood]

Nice to see another milk and cheese fan right around the same time I did mine.

 

[chiggins]

Nice to see another milk and cheese fan right around the same time I did mine.

I saw that! Yours is sweet, nice work. Mine was just leftovers from a farting-lemon parody, but I thought the face was appropriate for a disc with a good solid fade. Probably woulda been better on a Firebird, I always think of them sorta doing that as they pull the line harder and harder into the ground.