Adventures with Inkodye Part 1

I got a stash of Inkodye products from Bastelprofi and have been dying to try them out, for those of you that aren't familiar with Inkodye, its a sun activated fabric dye made by a company called Lumi, and its basically the coolest thing ever! To buy the supplies here in Switzerland, click here! 

So anyway, I had this stash and I just happened to have one of those extremely rare, entirely free days so I thought I'd crack it out! In the photo above is shown the contents in the 'Sunfold' printing kit, which is the dye in two colours (red and blue) and the detergent. It also includes rubber gloves and some instructions, with this kit you can soak fabric in the dye and either twist it using the patterns inside the box for different tie-dye effects or lay it out and place objects on top of it such as safety pins etc. The dye is light activated and therefore will only dye the fabric that is exposed to the light!

Also shown (and sold separately) is a roller, (which screws onto the top of the ink bottles) and some Inkofilm, on which you print negatives for a photo effect on your fabric.

So today I'm going to focus on the Inkofilm and preparing the negatives. This is a really cool and inexpensive way of producing customised Tshirts and other textile products without getting them printed professionally or buying in a load of screen printing equipment.

I decided to use a photograph of Tim & I in Mongolia for my textile print, so, I took it into photoshop to edit it. 

You basically have to turn the image into a negative (like in photography) so I changed it to B&W, changed the contrasts and levels etc and inverted it. Lumi also provide a step by step guide on their website here and provide an app to download to change your photo into a negative in case you don't have any software available to you.

When it comes to the printing stage, you need to create some custom settings, for example, the Inkofilm is 216mmx216mm, you will also need to make sure it is on the highest quality print setting and that you either select your output as 'Transparency paper' or 'Photo paper'.

Once thats out of the way, take a sheet of the Inkofilm out of the packet. You will notice that one side is slightly tacky and the other side is smooth, you will be printing on the tacky side as it absorbs the black ink. 

Then, take a breath, cross your fingers and press print! 

Lumi suggest printing two negatives and layering them to strengthen your negative, if the black areas on your negative are not dense enough, the light will penetrate the dye below and your image will not develop correctly! 

So this was part 1 of the Inkodye tutorial, it was quite a long process so I'm trying to break it up to make it easier for you guys, (and also easier for me to explain!)

Check back soon for part 2 where I will be using the dye and (hopefully) developing my photograph! 

Thanks for reading! Yasmin x