Question...how do you make your patches? They seem so fuckin cool. I'm working on a vest and a jacket atm, and I'd like for them to be done by the time a pride fest rolls around next month.
Main technique I use for making patches nowadays is linocut. Its best suited for mass production of patches.
Make sure to remember your carving the mirror image so you have to flip all the text. Using tracing paper to flip the design is a good trick, as well as leaving graphite marks on side, then pressing that to the lino to leave the marks in the same spot. Another trick with pencil is to view what ur carving in negative space quickly, put a paper over your design and shade over it with pencil, darker marks will be where you haven't carved yet.
I use speedball fabric ink, it takes 1 week to set then will be fine to be washed. I have magenta, violet, turqouise, and white. They have a limited range of fabric colors at the store. I have seen gold and silver fabric paint for sale and I will investigate it one day.
I use a speedball roller, i find the smaller one to be better than the big one as I can be more precise and waste less ink.
I got a fancy handle for $40 but the screws fallen out so its broken now so just get some heavy books. I used to use a mug. Whats important is pushing your whole body weight into it.
I got a speedball carving tool with different heads I can swap out so I can cut into the lino at different deepness and widths. The heads are stored inside the tool since its hollow and has a screwable removable bottom. I use linocut or dollar store erasers for my carvings. Make sure to wash the ink off your linocuts after your done using them.
A thing to increase the lifespan of you're linocuts is to use wood glue, some cork or wood pieces, and glued the lino stamps onto them. I dont do that yet so my stamps fall appart from overuse sometime and because I cut way too deep into the lino since I hate chatter.
Chatter is the term for in linocutting when theres little messy lines and stuff. It makes the art more recognisably to be linocut. My work is very clean with no chatter which is why people don't notice its linocut usually. This is a stylistic choice, with diy styles having a lot of chatter can look really cool so experiment with leaving bits of extra uncarvered lino sticking out in ur stamp. I need to experiment and buy some more lino.
You can also use multiple linocut stamps together to make a patch. Some patches ive made have like 8 different stamps. Ive made a dog nonsense patch where each letter was their own eraser stamp. You can also use different colors between the different lino stamps on the same patch to add more color. An effect I like to do is first stamp it in color, then the next day I stamp it in white over the same spot but shifted to the right and down slightly. It makes the text have a cool border 3D effect I love doing.
If making a more detailed picture with colors, i reccomend hand painting patches. I use white fabric paint mixed with acrylics for color to get all the shades i need. Acrylic paint mixed with fabric softener works too.
If doing words and you dont want a unique font reccomend using letter stamps. If you want a unique font for that i recommend hand paint for individual or linocut for mass produce.
The positive of letter stamps is the font is neat and can be done quickly. I know from lending them to my roommate that they are very helpful if you have dyslexia and have trouble getting letters right.
A visual effect of the letter stamps is that have a nice boxy edge effect, its an imperfection that adds a personally touch to it. I have both lower and upper case stamps that I got from michaels. You can use a hair band or elastic to hold a bunch of letter stamps together to make a word stamp.
You can use other stamps than letters that you find at craft stores for example my racoon print is a craftstore stamp.
You can also find big plastic letter stencils at the dollar store that you can use to do lettering by filling in gaps with a sponge or or paintbrush. They make special paintbrushes just for using stencils.
You can also get plastic stencils in the shapes of things, i got some for children and use a horse stencil for my horse smoking weed patch. Easier than drawing a horse myself.
Another technique I use for more unique clean patches is gel plating. I haven't tried printing laserprint images with it as ive seen online a lot but I will try one day. What i personally do is use it to make imprints with chains and physical objects.
Another thing i use with gelplates are any stamps or linocuts that dont have words, or words ones that i fucked up with and forgot to mirror when carving. It flips mirror image twice with the gel plate so it goes back to being right again on the patch.
Another patch making technique is using foamboard cut into shapes glued onto cardboard. This is good for a quick test of a design and is very cheap to make. It will not hold under water so is more difficult to clean.
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I made new patches :)
These ones aren’t for sale b/c i did not design some of them but if you want to see my other patches click here
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Made some more patch pants (this time from a thrifted pair of pyjamas, because comfy, and some old patches I had lying around)
Inspired by the wonderful tutorial from @rattusrattus3 🖤
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Since I’m out of new art to post for the moment, I thought I’d share my battle jacket
She’s not the most traditional punk jacket, given that she’s not black, and not denim or leather, but I find the softer fabric more sensory friendly. The base is a corduroy quilted jacket I got on sale at an LL bean outlet. (Not thrifted, unfortunately, which is especially poser of me). However, she’s good quality and will last a long time, which is important to me.
The patches are all hand-sewn on, as are the beads on the cuff, which were harvested from some thrift-store costume jewelry. The patches were all either made by me or ordered on Etsy, with the exception of the free Palestine patch, which were given out by someone at my school earlier this year.
As you can see the back is still a work in progress. I started the jacket (my first) over the summer at about the same time I started printmaking, and there are a lot of mistakes in it, but I still like it. Planning to add some more to it soon.
Fun fact, this jacket is what coined the term “cozypunk” to describe my style, which then became the name of my shop and my url here on tumblr.
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