Final Piece

These (my coasters) are images of how the lino combined with the laser cut frail cotton turned out, the first print, as you can see, did exactly what i imagined it would do and tore out a large area of my work. The second one was done in exactly the same way only with more care. After seeing how delicated the prints are i think i will need to not only mount them onto card for more strength but also cover them in acetate or glass as a reality check, if they were to be used as coasters and placemats they wouldnt last very long at all.

Final Piece

Another cut was done using the calico setting but arranging my design so that half of the leaves were engraved, the other half cut so that i got a variety of textures. Im not overwhelmed by the outcome but time is getting tight and the laser cutter is hard to get to, so to avoid my design freying of ruining further i have thought about using card beneath it to sturdy it a little, my only concern which is quite major is that when i use the lino to print onto this im afraid it will take my design with it because of how delicate it is. Iv cut a few of each of the coasters and placemats so i can test some before making final decisions.

Final Piece

These are my attempts at Laser Cutting for my final coasters and placemats, i found a cotton material in a dark brown i laser cut my design onto paper first and it appeared to work wel apart from having to delete a few doubled layers. I put the cotton into the laser cutting machine and started the cut. I changed the material setting to light cotton before hand and the first example here is how it turned out. The laser cutter barely engraved into the fabric even though it was set to cut-through, so i changed the settings to calico because its a slightly heavier fabric than cotton. The second image here is my calico-set laser cut cotton, it cut through far too much making the cotton frey and the design began to fall apart, this left me in a bit of a situation considering these are the only settings even close to what i needed.

Final Placemat Design

This is my chosen idea for the placemats, iv chose to stick with my coaster idea but extended the leaves out across the printing surface more, as i have more room to fill. iv also enlarged it slightly. It will have all the same colours and be laser cut all the same as the coaster but will measure to 19.7cm X 19.7cm and the design, as iv already mentioned, is slightly more exaggerated.

Final Coaster Design

This is my final idea/design for my coaster, portrayed as basic as possible so that it was quick to draw and easy to understand.
The top layer shows what would be the laser cut area of leaves onto the lino printed crow (cross hatched trace beneath it) although this of course will all be merged into the same layer of my design. Made from cotton either dark brown or cream printed with either dark blue or black ink, possibly even both...

The second picture here is basically a non-slip material which i will use as the base of my coaster. Depending on the width of the entire thing when it's placed together will determine weather i put a light weight card between the layers to make it slighly more rigid.
The size will be 8.5cm X 8.5cm, and my design will fit quite central onto this small area.

I also came across this wooden framed coaster base which i thought my design would look quite nice mounted inside. Its alot smaller than what i want my final design to be, but i also found a larger one like this which i could use for the placemat.

Thoughts So Far...

For lino Printing; Linen and Velvet seemed to print best. Cotton was ok but maybe needed more work to get the perfect print. Colour wise I liked both black onto the cream colour of the linen and the blue onto the dark brown velvet, the effect could perhaps appear different when printed onto cotton so as of yet the colour is undecided.
For laser cutting; cotton definitely gave the best result, but I do think the tile was effective.
As for Dry Point; the lighter weight papers appeared to work better, and the orange was most visually appealing but I don’t think I will use this technique.
To conclude, if I can get a well working Lino Print onto cotton it would definitely be the best working material as of yet. I decided earlier that laser cutting then lino printing would make it easier to line the two processes up.

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This is basically my current design multiplied on the placemat to create a tiled effect. I think it would be far too over crowded and the laser cut leaves would all merge together.