Santa's Little Helper....

I normally don't take commissions to dye custom art on discs. But I was contacted by someone who wanted to get 2 discs dyed for Christmas presents for her brother & father. One wasn't too complicated, a UNC Tarheel logo. The second one was inspired by my Calvin & Hobbes putter I did a while back. This one would be the pair under a starlit sky.

I decided to add some edge design shaving cream elements to surround the logo to kick it up a little.

It turned out Pretty good. The logo could have been centered a little better but overall it was a good 4 stage dye.

The Calvin & Hobbes dye would be much more difficult. The mask took a lot of time cutting all the star shapes that would be in the sky. The unknown was how to get a gradual fade from dark blue on the bottom to the black of the top.

What I ended up doing was holding the disc with the bottom edged in for the blue and rolling the disc along the bottom edge to get the dye darker on the bottom edge but also arch the top so it would just reach over Hobbes.

I reversed the process for black dye.

I finished up with the Calvin & Hobbes colors. It turned out very good considering I had never done any fades before this attempt. I forgot to take a pic of the bottom but what I did was take some Orcal vinyl and cut a solid mask along the bottom of the leading edge of the disc. The bottom is a clean white with a crisp separation line around the disc.

This will probably be the only time I take commissions to dye plastic. It's too nerve racking. The pressure to get it right because any mistakes or fuck ups and the disc is ruined. There is always some pressure on issues like that but when someone drops money for a service it bumps it up more than usual.

Shaving Cream Disc Dyes

I have been coming in to dying discs again. I have been inspired by some great work on DGCR that have been using shaving cream to do some beautiful tye-dye and other effects on their plastic.

I practiced on a few old discs and after I was fairly sure I could pull off the look I would be going for I gave it a try.

The basic concept here is you mix the dye in with standard shaving cream and then create patterns for certain effects. This process take a few hours to work instead of the few minutes with heat dyes.

The Big Lebowski was going to be the design. I started off with the black outline dye.

The next step would be to color the lenses of the sunglasses. I dropped small blue dots in a star pattern with a few yellow dots and then I filled it all in with red.

Then I created the outer pattern to go round the art. I was trying to create a flame pattern.

I then peeled off the outer edge mask. The dyes on the sunglasses was left on the disc. It was thich enough to stick and not move.

I left the disc to sit in the dye for about 4 hours....

... and this is what I ended up with.

The colors are a lot brighter than is the pic. To finish the disc I added a brown to color the hair highlights. It turned out really well for a beginner's attempt.