Exploring Digital Grounds on Fabric
My favorite method of transferring images to fabric is using Golden Products Digital Grounds.
So what exactly is Digital Grounds?
Digital Grounds is a liquid product that you paint onto a flat surface to prepare it for printing through an inkjet printer. Digital Grounds results in inkjet prints that are vivid in color and have high quality clarity and detail. Digital Grounds products are similar to Inkaid products and are used for the same purpose.
Browse the many articles below where I share my techniques and show you how I work with digital grounds.
I love technology, I really do! But I love my books even more. The feel of them, the smell of them, the weight of them in my hands. So I’ve resisted getting a Kindle. And I resisted really well until recently when I was cleaning out all my old books …
If you love to print on fabric as much as I do, it’s easy to get confused by the various products that are available for this purpose, and the two products I get asked about most frequently are Bubble Jetset 2000 and Digital Grounds. The most common question .. Is …
With the opening of my new website which I set up for the primary reason of giving my book owners a place to hold their “Book Club” groups – more information about that here – it also has given me the opportunity to implement another idea that’s been rolling around …
Have you ever found yourself being forced to go in a different artistic direction from what you intended? It’s kind of unnerving sometimes don’t you think? Lately I seem to have become very attached to the three-sided shape for whatever reason. Geometric designs have never quite appealed to me with …
With the Exploring Digital Grounds on Fabric online class finally underway, I’ve at last managed to tear myself away from the computer long enough to sit down at the sewing machine and get some sewing work done! One of the projects I’ve been trying to finish for weeks is a …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began … Are you enjoying playing with your Digital Grounds? My obsession continues … Continuing my tests with Digital Grounds, I thought I’d try it out on some hessian. I love the texture of the …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began … The other day I did some testing with Digital Grounds using cheesecloth. I like using cheesecloth in my artwork because of the wonderful texture it produces. For this test I used cheesecloth with …
With only one week left to sign up for my Exploring Digital Grounds on Fabric online class (note – registration for this online class now closed), I thought I’d answer one of the most often asked questions about digital grounds – are images printed using digital grounds waterproof and can …
This is something new I’ve been working on this week – a three dimensional fabric vessel titled “Awakening”. I used one of my own digital art designs printed onto textured tissue paper which was treated with digital grounds; this gave the print a rich deep color and fine detail that …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began. Today I decided to take a little time out and do some water testing on some of the samples I’ve so far printed using Digital Grounds. Digital Grounds Sample Set In the Digital Grounds …
This was a custom order that I recently shipped to a customer. Serenity is one of my favorite designs and I just love the color; it’s very peaceful and calming. At the moment I’m only taking custom orders through my Etsy store which you can find here, but I’ll shortly …
Quilting on fabric treated with digital grounds is not difficult – once you know how of course – and today I’ve finally finished the project I began last week. I began by using one of my digital art designs printed onto fabric treated with digital grounds and then machine quilted …
The other day I showed you how using digital grounds to prepare your fabric can help stop the ink bleed when printing on certain types of fabric. You can find that post here. The fabric has been treated with digital grounds to enhance the inkjet print, and although the hand …
With the Digital Grounds Online Class happening shortly (note – registration for this online class is now closed), I’ve been working up some extra class samples to show my students just how versatile and effective using digital grounds can be when printing on fabric. One of the questions I get …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began … I’ve been putting some strange stuff through the printer these last few weeks. This one is crackle paste on fabric. I really like both the crackle effect and the results of the printed …
Whew … just finished the project for my upcoming “Exploring Digital Grounds on Fabric” online class; a beautiful fabric notebook cover using one of my digital art designs called “Waiting for Spring”. And aren’t we all? Waiting for spring that is. Working with this project, students will learn the techniques …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began. Some of you have asked how Digital Grounds works with non-woven materials like tyvek and lutradur. Today let’s look at Lutradur. I like using lutradur for certain applications; much for the same reasons that …
I’ve been having some fun recently making fabric jewelry using bits and pieces of leftover embellishments and other odds and ends like “injured prints”. “Injured prints” are inkjet prints on fabric that didn’t quite turn out good enough for the project, but not bad enough to throw away. Last week …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began. I often work with cheesecloth and incorporate it in different ways into my art quilts and more recently into the fabric paper that use to make some of my art bags, but I’ve never …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began. I like using dryer sheets in my art quilts and I particularly like printing on dryer sheets because the resulting prints are luminous and have beautiful web-like texture that you can’t achieve using other …
Please enjoy a rerun of my experiments with digital grounds; this is where it all began. In the last post I tested Digital Grounds and cotton fabric, and today I’m testing Digital Grounds on sheer organza fabric. Printing on organza is always a little challenging because of the sheerness of …
Testing! Testing! Yes, I’ve been playing around with diligently testing out the new Golden Digital Grounds products. So far it’s been a time consuming process painting on various layers of the stuff and then waiting around for it to dry but hopefully the samples will display some good results. Continue reading
I finally finished adding the feet and handgrips to this “Summer Rose” clutch bag. I’m really loving this design. You can see where it all started here.
It’s always a wonderful feeling to be acknowledged for the work you do whether it’s the ordinary day to day stuff that comes from a 9 to 5 job, or the personal work that’s close to your heart and comes from months and often years of honing your creative skills …
Last week I finished designing a new clutch purse using fabric beads in unusual ways – for handgrips and purse feet. You can see the finished design it here. Now the same clutch purse design takes on a whole new persona. Instead of using plain fabric, this one is being …
This week I’m sharing with you some of my favorite techniques. On Tuesday we looked at machine needle felting, Wednesday was all about Titivating Embellishments, Thursday was about the wonderful world of Fabulous Free Motion Quilting, and finally today we look at printing on fabric, specifically using Golden Products Digital …
When I said the other day … “I’m not sure if I’ll embellish this art bag.” Of course I was going to embellish it! Plus I found a fabulous way to use up my old broken jewelry. I really love the way it turned out. What do you think?
I’ve just finished a new art bag using one of my latest digital art designs called “Reminisce”. Isn’t she pretty? I can’t wait to take her out on my next shopping trip. And yes! I do actually use my art bags because they’re not only beautiful, but they’re designed to …
This week I’ve been super busy making some fabric postcards for the upcoming Arts on Stage event I’m participating in next month, and along the way discovered that injured prints make fabulous postcards. This is a print that really went screwy. It was printed using digital grounds on textured fabric …
It’s been a while since I posted any photos of my art bags but I’ve been quietly working away on a few new designs – this is one is called “Geisha” and I just love the way it turned out. As with all my art bags, this design is prepared …
Before I upgraded to my new wide format Epson printer, I was using an old HP wide format to print my large images. It did a fair enough job but it was rather finicky about what what I fed through it and this resulted in a number of very large …
If you remember my recent post about The Making of “Daisy” The Art Bag, then you’ll recognize the design on this new art bag. This is “Daisy” Version 2. I just loved the “Daisy” design and wanted to try it out on a different bag shape so I chose the …
When I began using digital grounds to print the artwork for my art bags, I always began by first printing a smaller print to test the design for color, composition and any apparent design problems. As you may recall, these test prints were just the right size to make journal …
I shared the other day about my new art bag “Poppy”. I *love* the design so much I just had to do another art bag, but this time I decided to do a different shape. This one is a quite large, about 14″ wide x 10″ high and 3″ wide …
As I mentioned the other day, I just purchased a new wide format printer – an Epson Workforce 1100. I’ve been playing around with it this weekend, putting it to the test, and it’s done *really* well. In fact it has a very nice feature that I didn’t notice first …
I posted the other day about a journal cover I made using a digital art piece called “Poppy”. I really like this particular design so I used the design again to make this art bag. These art bags are made using digital art printed onto fabric treated with digital grounds …
Using the same technique as I used on this journal cover, this is another of my digital art designs printed on fabric paper treated with digital grounds. I’ve treated the surface with a sealer which gives it a soft gloss finish and helps to protect the fabric paper. The results …
Taking a break from Art Bags, I whipped up this soft fabric journal cover using one of my print samples. This is a similar image to the one I used on this art bag, except it has a different background color and this image was printed directly onto fabric using …
This is a journal cover I finished recently. The image is a digital art design printed onto fabric paper using digital grounds. I’ve used this image before, but it’s taken on a whole new persona now that I’ve added other design elements. These journal covers are about 7″ x 5″ …
Ever since I began using digital grounds for my inkjet prints, I’ve also began taking an interest in digital art. It’s taken more than a little re-education to understand fully how Photoshop can be used to create interesting art because the most I ever used Photoshop for was to tweak …
This weekend I played around some more with my favorite fabric paper and my very favorite digital grounds, and combined the two together to make a lovely journal cover. I collaged together an image in Photoshop … … and printed it onto a sheet of fabric paper treated with digital …
One of my goals this year is to streamline my online business activities and websites as I move ahead with slightly different personal and professional goals than in the past, and one of those decisions I’ve made is to discontinue my online and downloadable workshops and classes. But wait … …
It’s not often I can find time to sew for myself but I took a little time today to play around some more with digital grounds and ended up with this lovely necklace – just the thing to dress up a plain dress or jacket. I printed on a piece …
If you love printing on organza and thought that this was the best result you could get, then you are simply going to love this news … you can print even better images on organza, with 100% transparency, by using a clear tar gel acrylic skin as a backing. I …
I posted the other day about this little art quilt and after living with it for only a day, I decided it needed some changes. First of all I chopped off an inch on the bottom and rearranged things to give it a little better balance. Then I added a …
Yes, I’m still playing with Digital Grounds – it really is too much fun because the printing results are soooo good, particularly when printing on organza. This is a little art quilt I just finished using some of Laura Murray’s beautiful overdyed kimono silks. I save every scrap and use …
I recently published a post about water testing using Digital Grounds which answered a few questions about water resistance when using Digital Grounds. But just to clarify further, Digital Grounds is intended to be used for printing images on fabric that will be used for artwork – stuff that hangs …
Yesterday I posted about printing on texture using Digital Grounds and gave you a preview of part of a new art quilt that I was putting together using the beautiful *windows* image. I finally finished the beading and this is the completed quilt. I like the color contrast and the …
Working with texture has always been one of my favorite techniques. I’ve always found it challenging and rewarding to find ways to merge both visual and tactile texture into my artwork. Continuing my experiments with Digital Grounds, I’m extremely impressed so far with the results I’ve achieved printing on texture …
The other day I posted a test piece using cheesecloth on an acrylic “skin”. Today I’m posting the same technique but instead of cheesecloth, I’m using a poly type lace. Even though both fabrics are classified as “sheer”, printing on them has produced *totally* different results. The lace I used …
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Digital Grounds Sample Set
