OUGD 504 - Foiling and Flocking

Another process that actually involved screen printing was foiling, as well as flocking. I decided that I would give this process a go also in order to see what kind of results I could achieve. After speaking to Andy, the print room technician, I realised that in order to be able to have a design that involved screen printing and foiling, or flocking, I would have to do the foiling aspects first. This is due to the use of the heat press, which would heat up the acrylic and cause it to stick to the foil as well as the glue, resulting in a mess.

In order to use this process, I first had to transfer my image onto a fabric screen. This is due to the thresh count difference and the fact that this allowed the correct amount of glue to pass through the screen onto my paper. Once this had been done, I then just simply screen printed my glue, the exact same way that I would normally screen print. Once the glue had slightly dried, I then just stuck my foil and flocking onto my design in different ways in order to see what could be achieved; the foiling had to be placed on shiny side facing up whereas the flocking was placed furry side down. This is the heat press that we used:

We had to alter and then wait for the machine to warm up. We set it at 160 degrees for 12 seconds, which is the correct amount of time needed to successfully heat press.

You then place a few sheets of newsprint onto the base of the heat press, with your design placed on top. You then cover your design with a few more sheets of newsprint in order to stop the foil sticking to the actual metal press. You then simply press the machine down so that it clamps onto your work; the timer will automatically start and beep to alert you that it has finished.

These were the designs that I foiled and flocked, all ending up rather successful:

Gold Foil on Pearl Paper

White Flock on White Paper

White Foil on Black Paper

Transparent and Gold Foil on White Paper

Transparent and Gold Foil on White Paper

White Foil and White Flock on White Paper

Grey and Gold Foil on Pearl Paper

Navy Flock and Gold Foil on White Paper

Pewter Foil on Pearl Paper

Silver Foil on Pearl Paper

Final Outcomes:

Now that I had completed all of the foiling experiments that I wanted, incorporating both foiling and flocking into the same design, I decided that it was time to now also include screen printing; this time I had to use a paper screen once again. In order for this to work, due to foiling and flocking being the first step in this process, I had to slightly alter my screen print. I had to take the elements of the screen print that I foiled and flocked, and remove them from my screen print. This allowed me to screen print over my foiling and flocking, without actually printing directly on top of the foil or flock. However, when I initially tried to screen print, I encountered a slight problem:

Because of the way in which I had made my image halftone, in order to use it as a screen print, it made my image not expose properly. As you can see from the images above, my screen print has come out very patchy due to the blurry aesthetic created by the halftone tool. I spoke to Andy the technician and he informed me of where I went wrong and how to easily correct it. He told me that the most effective way to create an image to screen print is through Photoshop, and the bitmap tool. This involved a simple and short process that turns any image into one suitable for screen printing.

Upon opening the image, I first had to change the image so that it was grayscale, therefore discarding any colour information that the image had. Obviously when exposing the screen, my image would need to be black and white anyway; this step is also essential in order for the rest of this process to work.

After having altered the levels and curves of my image until it was suitable for what I wanted, I then went back into the mode menu, and selected the Bitmap option.

I played around with a few different variations of frequency and angle until I found the aesthetic that I wanted within my design:

This image has 35 frequency, meaning that there are many more dots that make up my image. However, I am unsure that my image would expose successfully with such small details like this.

This image has 30 frequency, but still doesn't quite have the obvious halftone aesthetic that I am looking for.

This image has a frequency of 25, and the halftone effect is much less subtle. This is the kind of image that I want to use within my design, and I am sure that my image will expose correctly with a frequency this low. I then exposed my paper screen and began printing onto my pre-foiled and pre-flocked images.

As you can see from these prints, my actual image has screen printed so much better than my original experiments. This is something that I have learnt from this process and will definitely use within future design work when working with the screen printing of images. I am also very happy with the way in which I have managed to successfully combine two different processes, even three in some cases, within the same image; this being something that I think could prove tricky if not properly thought out. Overall, this has been a very beneficial process for me to have explored and perhaps look at developing.