Cave Turtle Artesprix Blank of the Month Decorative Sign

Hello! I’m Alison Heikkila and I am so glad you stopped by today. The November Blank of the Month from Artesprix is a Decorative Sign. That means you can only get this Blank (or substrate) in November 2022. The Sign is great because you have a ton of space to create amazing designs. We affectionately call my daughter a "Cave Turtle", because she loves to hang out in her bunk bed with a ton of pillows, blankets, and fun lights while she reads, draws, listens to music, etc. So when I asked her what I should put on the Decorative Sign she immediately said I should make her a Cave Turtle sign. So, I took inspiration from a T-shirt and game company that we love and drew her her very own cave turtle sign, and then painted it with Artesprix’s awesome sublimation paints. 

What is Artesprix Iron-on-Ink?
Artesprix Sublimation Markers, Ink, and Paint are specially formulated to allow you to use basic copy paper to: color, stamp, stencil, and monoprint anything you wish and turn it into a heat-transferable design. These designs are then applied to a polyester or polyester coated substrate with heat and pressure. You can use a heat press or a home iron! These designs, through this process of sublimation, will become permanent on your substrates.

Materials:
Decorative Sign
Acrylic Paint Set
Protective Paper
Heat Tape
Canson Mixed Media Paper
Brushes
Pencil
Optional: Masking Fluid & Light Box 

Step-by-Step Tutorial: 

Step 1: Trace your Decorative Sign on to a piece of Mixed Media Paper with a pencil. The pencil marks will not transfer during the sublimation process. 

Step 2: Sketch out your drawing with pencil.

Step 3: Words and numbers need to be written backwards so that they transfer correctly. I drew my main design first, then flipped my design over and wrote the words on the back. Then, I flipped the paper over again and retraced the letters with a light box so that they were backwards.

Step 4: Begin painting your design. You can make any color you can imagine with Artesprix’s Acrylic Paints. They even have a Color Mixing Chart that you can download and print! I stuck with various shades of green and purple for my sign. I recommend adding at least 2 coats of paint for very solid, opaque color.

Step 5: This is my finished design. I left the area around the turtle’s head without paint so that it would stay white. For the letters, I thickened up my lines and painted around them so that they would also be white after sublimating.  

Pro Tip: I could have used masking fluid on the letters to make the painting process a little easier, but the way I did it worked just fine. If you do use masking fluid, be sure to rub it off before you try sublimating. 

Step 6: Tape your design face down to the Decorative Sign. Be sure to use plenty of Heat Tape, as the sign is quite thick and heavy. You don’t want anything to shift.

Step 7: It’s time to make the "Sublimation Sandwich". This sandwich not only ensures a great transfer of your design, but it will protect your heat source as well. Your sandwich will be: Protective Paper, Design (face down), Decorative Sign, Protective Paper.

Step 8: Let’s sublimate! Place the Sublimation Sandwich into your Heat Press (be sure to adjust the height to accommodate the thickness of the sign) and press at 400℉ for 105 seconds.

Step 9: "Peek Test" time! Let’s take a look at a corner of our project to make sure our design transferred well. If it didn’t, since we still have a lot of tape attached, we can put it back into our heat press to sublimate again.

Here is what my sublimated Decorative Sign looks like next to the original art. Look at how vibrant those colors are now!

Step 10: Add the accompanying ribbon to the sign for hanging.

Here is my little Cave Turtle with her new sign. She absolutely loves it! It looks a little dark in this photo because it’s kind of dark in her “cave,” but you can really see how shiny the sign is! I really loved making this sign for her. If you don’t want to paint your own design, you can stamp, stencil, monoprint…the sky is the limit!

The Artesprix collection of paints, inks, and markers make sublimation easy and limitless. How would you like to get more ideas on using Artesprix’s Sublimation Iron-On-Ink? There’s a Facebook Group that’s just for fans of Artesprix! You can click HERE to join. Also, don't forget to visit the Artesprix store to see all of the available blanks and bundles, so you can get started with sublimation.  

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Have an inspiring day!

Alison Heikkila 

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