Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Printable silk

Printable SilkAt the Mobile Marine Models open day I picked up a sheet of printable silk from Barry's Model Lettering. It's A4 sized and the material is backed with paper to make it run through the printer easily. Once printed this is peeled off leaving just a silk sheet. The sheet cost £2.60. Cotton, linen and vinyl are also available.

The photo shows a cruel close up of the silk side. The weave is a lot finer than it appear here. Also the camera and lighting combination have conspired to make the pure white look a bit yellow and blotchy.

My next job is to work out what to do with this stuff. Barry intendeds it to be used for model boat flags. That's a nice idea as you can make a unique pendant or club flag to hang on your vessel. The makers shows something involving a cot on the instructions. My first thought is 7mm scale wagon tarpaulins. Although these are available, I wonder if the finished on a home printed one would be a bit more realistically course than the paper versions. You could even chop it up and glue the results together to represent the sheets of material that make up the real thing.

For the moment though, this goes into the pile of solutions awaiting problems. I just hope that when the problem occurs I can still find it !

In the meantime, has anyone got any more suggestions ?

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