Sublimation printing with disperse dyes...say that three times fast!

Hi everybody.I decided to do a little experimenting with art materials right now, and I ordered myself some disperse dyes from a dye expert manufacturer here in the UK.What these are are coloured powders which mix with water for a watercolour like consistency, or with water and a gum arabic type thickner for acrylic type consistency. Then you can paint a design on to paper and then transfer the design, using heat, onto fabric. The painted powders disperse into gas and resolidify onto the fabric. This is called sublimation.So here I am all geared up for toxicity (as per leaflet warning).To tell you the truth, I'm not sure this is any more toxic that my oil paints, but it is a complete unknown to me.And, as usual, I have very little idea of what I'm about to do.So let's just get our fingers gloves dirty, shall we?Here are 5 of the colours mixed with a little water.The leaflet didn't say how much water, but this looked pretty ok to me.The colour mix doesn't look anything like the colour it represents, so that was fun. I kept mistaking the brown for green and the blue for black. :DThe leaflet also didn't say what kind of paper, so I started off with a piece of Japanese printing paper and painted this moth on it.This paper turned out to be really absorbent!Then I tried with, (clockwise starting with the moth on the Japanese printing paper), regular, cheap sketch paper (grass), Yupo paper (woodpecker), tear-off palette paper (mushroom), and vintage onion skin paper (moth)Next step was to heat the whole thing up.Now I don't happen to have a heat press hanging around, so the trusty old iron will have to do.I also didn't have the required polyester fabric, but a piece of some synthetic white pillow case (maybe polyester or rayon or something like that) would have to do for this experiment.So, the sandwich went like this: cotton sheet on floor (not to make a mess), newsprint, painted paper, fabric, plain paper and iron on top.So look! Piece by piece I sublimated the paintings on paper onto this fabric!If you think they look a little fuzzy that's because they are! I didn't account for the wiggle caused by the iron and the edges are not sharp. Live and learn...huh? Either way, I'm super thrilled that the whole process worked.By the way, I managed to fuse several of the palette sheets together with the iron, so I may have to rethink that! LOL.And then, because there was still some time in my day, I mixed a couple of the watercolour consistency dyes with the thickner into more acrylic type consistency.Got that a little wrong too because it seems like you cannot stir a little in and try to add more without making lumps.But I still had plenty of paint to use, so...I painted a couple simple designs on paper and sublimated those.Hey, now I'm getting some more and deeper colours.There's no doubt in my mind that this was a useful and fun learning curve. And also that I'm bound to figure it all out.Right now I have visions of giant, colourful flags and curtain-like wall hangings.But maybe I'll start by getting some proper polyester material and figuring out these dyes. :DAcrylic prints are a rage these days and you could learn more about prints here.