Instructions
To get a natural sense of correct proportions when working with
powders and liquids, try to bake 4 different pastries in the
following order: a two color cake, small and salty dill breadjes,
cookies and small apple-cinnamon tarts.
You are going to need
Stencil of your design: You don't have to make a stencil of
your existing design but design for stencil. Use the lasercutters to
get a more precise result. If you want to print on a surface the
cutting plotter would be useful to cut out a perfect sticker.
A good tube of toothpaste: Just a little goes a long way.
The colors of the paste doesn't matter unless you are not going to
use any acrylic paint.
Acrylic Paint: It can be any color but when mixed with the
metal dust the color will get darker. Another option is to use glue.
With clear water based glues metal dust rusts inside the paint. This
can be a good way to show time/ decay/ decomposition.
Metal Dust: This specific mix works with sanding machine
dust, but it does work with bigger chunks of metal shavings as well.
Optional: You can get Neodymium Disc Magnets to move the paint
around or to give it a spikey shape. The stronger the magnet,
spikier the result. However, keep in mind that a strong message
holds more power than spikey type.
Where to get the metal dust?
In most metal ateliers, there are different sizes of drillers. The
big industrial ones produce the small metal shavings and tiny
spirals. The hand drills produce a finer metal dust but still
distinguishable. The gold mine is under the sand machine where the
finest grinds of metal dust awaits. But this perfect dust is mixed
with sand paper residues. To seperate the two you can use a strainer
with tiny holes. If available, go out and dive in the big
construction garbage containers. Usually during summer moving
season, the containers are full. If you want to fish out dark
orange-deep red rusty metals wait for a day after the rain stops to
go out.
Mixing
I usually use one stripe of toothpaste for one stripe of acrylic
paint and portion the metal dust according to the flexibility of the
ingredients. Brand of the toothpaste and paint differ and this can
be challanging. Here's a graph to demonstrate the result of paint
layer with different variables:
Printing
On paper:
Adjust the proportions for the grain and thickness of your paper.
Decide what kind of effect you would like to get. If you are using
strong magnets consider switching to a weaker one to avoid any rips.
Place your stencil and stabilize it. Dab a piece of sponge/old
brush/ piece of cloth to your paint mixture and apply carefully.
Put your magnet underneath the phrases you think are most important.
You can move it around to magnetize more than one spot. Let it dry
overnight and air it to get rid of the minty toothpaste smell.
On another surface:
If your chosen surface is much more sturdier than paper, you can use
as much as the ingredients as you like and to get an even fluffier
texture you can add a tiny bit of water.
Place your stencil or sticker paper on the surface and dab your
mixture carefully. Try to apply as neatly as possible to avoid a
nasty amount of work after the paint dries.
Magnetize the areas you want to. If this is not available and you
still want to get a spike out of your work you can try to magnetize
the surface beforehand, which takes quite a long time depending on
the size of the object.
Leave your print to dry for a while. Before it is completely dry,
start peeling off your stencil.
Take a picture and send it to me
@igvestan.
