How to stop Printed Lines of Digi-Stamps from Bleeding.

I have not long discovered digi-stamps myself, and needed no encouragement to try them. I am blessed with being computer literate (or at least better at computers than some) I don't know why, 'cos I was a complete dunce at school. Now you must be thinking that you will not be able to use them as well as your favourite rubber stamps but fear not I will give you the benefit of my learning curve. It is up to you to try for yourself and see if you like them. It took me a while of trial and error, but now I have my preferred method there is no stopping me.
How do you Stop the Print Lines from Bleeding when Watercolouring?
I think the most useful tip for me was to keep an image stash box and print the images off and then forget about them for a few days. I did that with one digi-stamp and when I re-discovered the image in my image stash box I started watercolouring it and found half way through that I realised that I was working with a digi-stamp and not an image I had stamped with staz-on. Mind you, I'm not flooding my watercolour as much as I used to either because even staz-on bleeds if I do, so I suppose that helps as well. If I am in a moderate hurry, I dry the ink with a heat gun and then leave it for a few hours rather than days, as I suggested before. This allows me to print in the morning and work on the image in the afternoon.
Using Spray Fixative.
A suggestion was made to use a fixative, to fix the ink to the paper. I thought that this was a good idea, because there are times that I want to make a quick card and do not have the time to leave the image to dry for a couple of days. A friend of mine told me about hairspray being used as a fixative instead of the expensive proprietary inkjet printer fixative that you can buy. I have tried it and it does work, any cheap hairspray will work and will leave your paper with a slight perfume, which I find pleasant to work with.
I hold the paper about 12 inches away from the spray nozzle and spray for about 4 seconds moving the can over the image capturing the print lines. I am using copy paper, and when I first did it the paper looked glassy as if it were a grease mark on the paper, however this disappears when it is dry. I have used the heat gun here to dry out the paper and check that it is completely dry by holding it up against the window or a light box. There should not be a grease mark appearance when it is dry. You may get away with using less hairspray, and one day I will try that.
I then decided to water colour with my whispers pens (now that I had found the hair spray and had used it on my experimental image). I was amazed at the difference it makes, I can now use inexpensive copy paper the same way as if it were watercolour paper. In the past I was only able to use my Whispers by scribbling onto some acetate and picking up the colour with a water pen and then water colouring the image. The problem I had was not to flood the image with water. When I used the pens directly on the copy paper it soaked in too quick and would not move with the water so I got hard lines which looked a little odd as they would not blend in. Now though, with the addition of hair spray over the image which stops the paper from being so absorbent, I can draw a band of colour along the spine of a printed line then blend the colour into the body of the image with the water pen, just as if I was using expensive water colour paper. As I am blending away from the printed black line into the body of the image there is no danger of flooding the lines and making them bleed. Coupled with the added protection of the print lines being fixed with the hair spray, I think I am finally finding my groove of how to get the effect I want.
Can you use Embossing Powder?
I tried printing an image on acetate, but it never dried. I was using the wrong type of acetate, but it got me thinking about using embossing powder. After printing the image, I whipped it off the printer and flooded it with embossing powder which stuck to the ink as if I had used a stamp pad. The results were good It worked, to me it looks just like staz-on and heat embossed lines they were thin and sharp where they needed to be, and I was able to use up my stash of acetate. There are many places where you can buy special inkjet printable acetate and one place you can try is Joanna Sheen, which is what I am going to try next time. It's the sort of thing you might be more likely to get in an office-supplies place rather than just a craft shop so keep a look out on your travels. What you are looking for is that stuff that has got a coating on it that takes the ink, so it's not quite as clear as uncoated acetate which is what I was trying first, but unless you've got a direct comparison, you probably won't see the difference.
I printed out on paper with the hope of using embossing powder hot off the press, but just could not get the embossing powder to stick to the ink, however fast I took it out of the printer. I tried adjusting the ink settings by making the ink "heavy" but it came out of the printer too slow and was dry before I could put the embossing powder on. However, it seems a better quality for doing water colouring with and has a very slight tactile edge to it because the ink is so heavy, so this will do well with the hairspray method and leaving it aside for a few days for good measure. "Normal" printing meant that the paper spat out the printer quicker, but still was dry before I could use the embossing powder on it. I must have that new “improved” ink cartridge with quick drying ink or my paper is too absorbent, I haven’t yet tried this method with coated paper or iridescent paper that may not be quite so absorbent.
I thought I would try to trace the lines with a glue pen or the fine tip end of my Whispers Strokes pens, a bit like the double ended embossing pens you can get, they are supposed to be quite juicy. I thought that before it dried I could sprinkle the powder over it and heat set it and then I would get finer lines with the Whispers Strokes than I could get using the glue pen. The jury is still out on this test, as I would like to try different paper absorbencies before I make a decision on whether I like the effect or not. I would like to try printing some paper that has been previously fixed with hairspray to see if that will prevent the ink from drying so quickly enabling me to emboss with it. So plenty to try before I decide not to emboss with digi-stamps.
Well that is all the advice that I have to offer for now, I hope that some of it was useful, and remember half the fun is the discovery.


Update from Author. One day I noticed that my printer was set to "Draft" printing. I know this is because I was trying to save printer ink way back in the day, but I thought that I would give it a go without the Draft setting. Guess what? no more bleeding of ink!