DIY Roundup: Wheat Paste and Stickers
Posted on April 11, 2006
Filed Under Resources, How-To:, Stickers, Wheat Pasting, Printing |
One of the most viewed posts is one of the very first ones I ever put up here on streetres. It’s the Recipe for Wheatpaste #1. Now the comments section has tons of people who are asking for more info. So here’s a little more info for everyone.
- Follow Recipe for Wheatpaste #1 for intsructions on making the wheatpaste.
- Another method if you have disposable income is buying wallpaper paste, it’s readymade but doesnt last as long.
- Special Herbs: Add sugar to keep your wheatpaste from freezing up in the winter when you’re running around guerilla style
- Special Herbs 2: I’ve heard that adding wood glue and/or salt to the mix makes it extremely hard to remove
Wheatpaste:
- The general consensus is that you should use paper that is thick enough that it wont fall apart when you apply the wheatpaste.
- Newspaper can be tricky to use as once it’s wet it’ll rip fairy easily, ruining chances of repositioning if you fuck up.
- I prefer to use Sign Painter’s paper as I like the thickness of the paper. Any other reccomendations?
Paper for Wheatpastes:
- For Vinyl Stickers, you have to silkscreen them. Water based ink is the ink that home screeners usually use for tees. This wont work on vinyl. There’s another kind of oil based ink thats pretty fucking noxious that you need to use to make it stick to vinyl. I think the stuff for vinyl is called plastisol, but I’m not a silkscreener. Check with your silkscreenin friends first.
- My preferred method is still inkjet but if you can swing a color laser copier at work you usually get better colors and they’re water fast (even tho sticker paper isnt). You may want to do a test run on a work laser printer as many use a wax base for the inks now and if you stick it and try to peel it up the sticker gets ruined.
Stickers:
- Going Big
- One way to make a giant printout is to use a program like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Newer versions allow you to have a giant picture and tile the printing. Be sure to use a work or kinko’s printer as inkjet will smear. Generally you get a border around each page that you can trim and tape all the pieces together using lightweight masking tape.
- The other way is to go to Kinko’s, a 2 foot x 3 foot b&w costs around 6 bucks. Its expensive but it works in a pinch.
Thats all for now…
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Yes, the silkscreen ink for printing on vinyl is called plastisol
link to info about plastisol: http://www.unionink.com/articles/geninfo.html.
Also, a good tip for handdrawn/homeprinter stickers.. is to give them a couple light coatings of polyurethane or shellac spray. Don’t spray too much, or it will make your ink run, as it changes the chemical compound of your inks.. thats why i suggest two light coatings.. it dries in like 5 min.. Anyway, this really helps to keep the stickers more weatherproof and the colours don’t fade as much.
this is then only wheatpaste recipe i’ve found that works, all the other ones make the wheat flour and water mixture turn thick at the bottom of the pot and i’m not sure how to avoid this. lower heat just does the same thing and takes forever to cook.. anyways
10 cups of water in a large pot
2 cups of wheat flour in another container
1. Start boiling the 10 cups of water
2. Add enough cold water to the flour to make it pourable
3. Right before the 10 cups start to boil (theres little bubbles on the bottom of the pot) start pouring the flour mixture in.
4. Pour the mixture in really slowly, stirring the WHOLE WHOLE WHOLE time, again very slowly, spread it out across a minute or so.
5. Bring this mixture to a boil, it’ll start boiling over itself and looking pretty cool, and regularly check the bottom of the pot with a spoon or something to make sure nothing is sticking.
6. Boil it for 2 – 3 minutes, don’t let it burn (you can smell it burning and there will be bullshit stuck to the bottom of your pot)
7. Remove from heat, pour in your storage bucket, and add and handful of sugar (extra stickiness) and salt (preservative?).
Thats it.. did it for the first time last night and it worked beautifully.. i’ve tried a BUNCH of other recipes to no avail.
enjoy