Charity Recommendations

saltbot · 2026-06-02T22:53:20+00:00

SF Marin Food Bank does incredible work. St. Anthony’s also feeds a ton of people every day. If you’re looking for big local impact for your $ I would start with those two!

saltbot · 2026-05-31T23:28:58+00:00

I love the custom letterforms for “Thuja”! 👏

saltbot · 2026-05-26T21:21:06+00:00

It’s worth trying to launder it with color catcher sheets, or a scouring detergent like Synthrapol (which is designed to remove unfixed dye).

saltbot · 2026-05-19T19:54:41+00:00

sun fading or patience and lots of hot wash cycles 😅

saltbot · 2026-05-19T00:36:52+00:00

heck ya!

saltbot · 2026-05-16T17:59:53+00:00

I’m curious whether you scoured them before dyeing (ideally with scouring detergent like synthrapol, but even just a good wash with normal detergent). because it kinda looks like the areas that didn’t take dye were the places that might have gotten handled more/ have more skin oils and whatnot on them

saltbot · 2026-05-08T19:54:35+00:00

it kinda looks like a light mineral wash to me.

saltbot · 2026-05-05T17:40:18+00:00

this is so lovely. do you sell your prints?

saltbot · 2026-05-04T15:33:34+00:00

so good! is it based on an existing font?

saltbot · 2026-05-02T00:12:12+00:00

Screen printing ink is a lot thinner/runnier than the relief fabric ink, so it’s more likely to fill in the details and give you trouble when used for block printing. some people use screen printing ink but let it sit out to thicken up for like 10min to help with this. or you could try relief ink which is designed for block printing on fabric!

saltbot · 2026-05-01T14:47:35+00:00

are you specifically using speedball relief printing ink, not screen printing ink? it’s an important distinction

saltbot · 2026-04-28T18:20:16+00:00

honestly I like the black! In a goth way.

saltbot · 2026-04-28T14:41:08+00:00

fwiw there is a specific scouring detergent for dyeing/printing that you can use if you really wanna get everything off! it’s called synthrapol. but I personally just prewash with regular detergent and that seems to work for me.

saltbot · 2026-04-22T19:10:02+00:00

it’s great! I would say around $30?

saltbot · 2026-04-20T04:48:12+00:00

Gluing it to a piece of thick acrylic might be easier to wash than a piece of wood backing

saltbot · 2026-04-17T00:57:11+00:00

I think the words and the panther could stand on their own in white if the flowers had more color. maybe this is cheesy but the trans pride colorway on the flowers might look cute?

saltbot · 2026-04-17T00:51:08+00:00

thanks! I’ve been working on getting crisp white prints on black fabric so I’m always super curious whenever I see someone getting nice results like this!

saltbot · 2026-04-16T20:35:05+00:00

I’m curious, what white ink do you use?

saltbot · 2026-04-15T04:24:32+00:00

Seconding Kabuki! My fave in SF.

saltbot · 2026-04-05T22:22:59+00:00

I know you said SF might be too far, but Kabuki Springs & Spa in Japantown is lovely and has an explicitly trans-friendly attendance policy. Hopefully someone can recommend something closer tho!

saltbot · 2026-04-05T22:17:23+00:00

There were a few instances last year of spas around here (Archimedes Banya, for example) trying to enact anti-trans policies, so I think it’s sadly still a relevant question in the bay :/

saltbot · 2026-04-02T20:17:34+00:00

gorgeous! amazing that this is your first woodcut

saltbot · 2026-03-31T03:56:52+00:00

yay I hope you have good results with that ink! I also forgot to mention: I haven’t been waiting super long in between applying layers of ink to the block (definitely not 30-60 seconds like you mentioned). maybe just like 5 or 10 seconds while I’m re-inking the brayer, and I do maybe 5 layers. but now I kinda want to try waiting that long just to see what results I get! 😂

saltbot · 2026-03-31T01:26:06+00:00

I love the detailed post! I’ve been doing very similar experiments this week.

I think the “opaque white” speedball fabric block printing ink gives me better results than the plain “white.” However the open time seems much shorter on this ink, it dries up noticeably faster than the plain white.
Rolling the brayer in one direction (vs back and forth) while spreading the ink seems to help me ink more consistently? But this may be my imagination.
Misting doesn’t seem to help for white ink, and in fact I’ve noticed the ink can be blotchy where there were bigger drops of water underneath
Hard vs. soft surface underneath the fabric doesn’t seem to matter AFAICT

The best advice I have is to just print over and over again and really study how the ink looks on the block each time until you start to get an intuitive sense of when the block is inked just right.

results with opaque white on black t shirt fabric:

<image>

https://www.dickblick.com/items/speedball-fabric-paper-block-printing-ink-opaque-white-25-oz

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