3 Creative Rescues for Photo-printing Fails: UKScrappers Spring Blog Hop

Hello, hello.

We had some sunshine this week [albe it in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of way] and so I guess spring is going to make an appearance after all! Which is useful ... because today I'm joining in with the spring blog-hop on the UKScrappers forum:

If you landed on me after hopping over from 'Mole's Creations' then ouch! that's going to leave a bruise, but also ... welcome!

If you lose your way at any point in the hop [like when I leave a shop in a big mall, get confused, and head back the exact way I just came] or have dropped in on me directly and want to follow the hop, you can see the full list with all the stops on the hop here.

Now let's stop rabbiting on [get it? Hop? Rabbits? Oh never mind] and have look at a few ways of you can claw-back something creative from a photo-printing fail!

I don't know about you but I find home-photo printing wonderfully convenient ... but also, something of a dark art!

Just when you think you know: what settings to use or how the colours on screen actually appear on paper or what paper gives you which depth of colour etc ... it goes and spits out an image that's either ridiculously luminous or one that's super-gloomy! Or other times the ink soaks into the paper leaving a ghostly chalky finish ... and not to mention when it runs out of a colour halfway through!

When this happens what I should do [after taking a few deep breaths and putting the hammer down] ... is throw them away... and move on. But I don't!

Ink is so expensive that I hang on to them, storing them in a folder of their own ... and occasionally, when I'm feeling experimental ... I rescue one ... and get messy without worrying about spoiling anything!

Rescue 1. [the messiest]

Bleaching photos is an idea I picked up from Alisa Burke's 'Anti-Scrapbooking' class a few years ago [it's still available here] and while it's a little bit messy ... and hit & miss ... it's also a little bit magical too!

Personally I don't have follow any specific technique for this ... I literally just add bleach to my photos using a paintbrush, a cloth or a toothbrush [or a mix of all 3]. I like to run my finger along the toothbrush bristles to get little spots and dots or to drip splodges on from a height.

Here are my latest experiments ...

Images home-printed on regular, cheap, matte photo paper:

The bleach was left to work on these for around 10 minutes but, as you can see, it didn't remove much of the original colour.

Which is a surprise really isn't it?

 Just think if you accidentally splashed bleach on to a perfect photo ... you'd panic and expect the worst wouldn't you? But then here's me trying to get a fab bleachy effect, with mounds of neat bleach ... and very little happens!

That said, there are some nice subtle colour changes and markings on these ... and I can definitely see these ending up on a nice messy art journal page. Maybe with some stencilling, ink splats and pen work on top.

However ... professionally printed images offer different results altogether:

These were a couple of family photos from the 80s which were living out their days in a box, rather than being appreciated or celebrated in an album, so I didn't mind experimenting with precious originals.

 

Unlike the previous experiments with home-printed images - these need hardly any time in contact with the bleach. If you leave it for any longer it removes ALL the colour, right back to the white ... so be careful!

 

Tips for bleaching photos:

• cover up any faces / areas you want to remain untouched
• dab / splatter / flick the bleach on to the image
• leave for a few moments [you can poke the surface to see what's happening beneath!]
• then wipe off with a damp cloth to reveal some lovely, arty, textures

These are by no means perfect examples ... but I do like the colours and shapes it's added to the image and I can imagine making lovely pastel-shaded, painty scrapbook pages with them.

OK then ... if drastic chemicals aren't your thing ... how about knives and punches? [I bet you didn't expect this post to be so dangerous did you?]

Rescue 2.

I printed out this photo of me, reading in the garden, for a feature in Papercraft Inspirations magazine but the colours came out ... odd. Hyper coloured. Slightly unrealistic. And, in my mind, just not good enough for publication!

So I chopped it up with a craft knife and ruler, rounded the corners, and used it as a focal point on an art journal page:



I doodled around it in white pen and stencilled over the edges to help nestle it down into the page. And here it is in context:

There are many ways you could use imperfect photos on journal pages eg. cutting around figures / faces / combining them with stamped elements or magazine clippings ... but that's possibly material for another 5 blog posts ...

... so I'll leave that one there for now and move on to the final 'rescue' for today:

Rescue 3.

This particular photo is not actually a photo-printing fail... it's a photo-trimming fail.

A Julie-fail.

I'm not ashamed to admit it but ... paper-trimmers are my crafty Kryptonite. I'm hopeless with them.

Years ago, I attended a workshop where we made a mini book with all different flaps and lift-y bits and we had to use a paper-trimmer to get the correct sizes. The demonstrator spent most of her time explaining to me how to use the trimmer and where to cut. To little success. [In case you lose any sleep over the matter .. she later recruited me to her Design Team so I must have done something right ... despite my feeble trimming skills!!].

Anywhooo ... I digress ...

This poor photo was a casualty from when I bought my new trimmer ... and completely misjudged [i.e: had no clue about] where the blade was. Rather than trim around the edge to leave the thin white border I like ... I chopped the image in half!

This was also a photo I needed for a magazine feature [Creativity! magazine this time] so, after printing out a fresh copy for my article, I refused to throw this one away. As it's a photo of one of the views near to where I live I made a 'from us to you' general greeting card:

The rest of the card features other interestingly shaped edges and has a relaxed feel from using sticker-sheet left-over surrounds and torn washi tape ... so I think the poor imperfect photo looks perfectly at home there.

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So there are your 3 creative rescues for photo-printing fails ...

• any favourites?
• any ones you want to try out?
• any you're scared of?

Even if you bin your duff prints and think you've got nothing to experiment on ... I'll put good money on you having some less-than-incredible images in that packet of old photos you've got stuffed in the bottom of that drawer. Go check! Then show me the results of your experiments!

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And finally ...

• There's a prize draw as part of the UKScrappers Spring Blog Hop ... so make sure to read the full details on the blog hop forum thread here. [You will need to be a forum member to access this, but it's free to sign up].
• If you are entering the UKS prize draw you need to a leave a comment on each blog of the hop - leaving your UKS forum name in the comment too!
• I'm also offering a small crafty prize to any one eagle eyed to notice this low-key giveaway announcement! I don't know what to offer up so, this is only open to anyone who trusts me enough to send them something unseen!
• To win my mystery prize, please leave a comment on this post making it clear you want adding to the draw and telling me where exactly you keep all those badly lit, blurry 'I can't scrap that' photographs!  Deadline: 9am [UK Time] Tuesday 16th April. Winner will be selected at random.  Please make sure you are logged into an account on which I can contact you / leave a Twitter name / blog link etc. If the winner does not respond within 2 days following notification, I'll pick another.

If you're new here and you'd like to keep in touch you can also catch-up with me through my Facebook page or Twitter.

Now then ... that's me done for today ... the next stop for you is towards Gill from Paper-Collector Anon

Off you hop ...

Julie :-)