I Can Do What With My Printer?

Full size print at the bottom, scaled down onto 10 mm silk habotai in the middle and 8 mm silk chiffon at the top.

There have been many occasions, in my miniatures career, when I was hard pressed to find materials in a fine enough scale to work convincingly in 1/12 scale. This has been somewhat eliminated by advances in home printers and the materials now made to run through them. Some of us have been printing our own fabrics for a few years now. I have just recently started doing that for the miniature shoes I’ve been making. Up until now, I had used what materials I could find in the stores, a few…and I had needlepointed my own designs, slow and expensive! Now, with the investment in a few sheets of paper backed silk fabric, I can scan fabrics from my own stash and scale them down for miniature usage. It has greatly expanded the choices I have available, for my shoes, and for many other projects.

1/12 scale shoe made from a scaled down version of the fabric it sits on, printed on 8 mm silk chiffon.

Many other media are now available for use with inkjet printers. A company called Papilio makes water slide decal paper as well as several types of clear static cling and vinyl sheets. They also have rub-on decal paper and, should you or your miniature dolls require it, temporary tattoo paper as well as a few other interesting choices. Think of what you can do with the decal options…no more frustrating attempts to hand letter signs on wood or windows.

They have some sample packs available, just the thing for figuring out what you can do with the new options, I’m sure there are many uses yet to be dreamed up.

I found my silk fabrics at Dharma Trading. They have a nice selection of weights in silk and cotton fabrics as well as other media for inkjet printing. I’m looking forward to seeing in what other ways my printer can help with my miniatures.