Photoshop Wall Clocks

[Trevor.Dennis]

I heard what I thought a nice idea yesterday.  Good sized wall clocks sell for as little as $4 in Kmart type shops (We have The Warehouse in NZ and Oz).  A buddy of mine was telling me he strips them down, and pastes a novelty face on them.  He owns a pub, so he make roman numerals with beer bottles, but the possibilities are endless.  I am planing to make one for the Menz Shed I belong to with the logo (which I made) and maybe wood chisels for the numbers.   You could personalize them and they'd make great gifts for your children and or grandchildren.

It would probably be a good idea to laminate the dial face, which limits the size to the width of A4 in my case, but glossy photo paper would last in a dry environment  Are inkjet inks still water soluble?

So I thought I'd throw that out there, but I'd love to hear other ideas on how to develop it?

[Conrad C]

I've played around with this a little bit. The $4 clocks I came across are basic plastic with clear covers that are very easy to remove without tools, and the paper clock face inside is also easy to replace with any other print.

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

It would probably be a good idea to laminate the dial face, which limits the size to the width of A4 in my case, but glossy photo paper would last in a dry environment Are inkjet inks still water soluble?

I've never tried laminating, but the properties of the inkjet inks will depend on what kind they are. If your printer is designed to use archival fine art quality inks, water might not affect them. If I make a test print on my Epson 3880 and hold the print under water for a while, there is no running, bleeding, or smearing of any kind with its Ultrachrome K3 pigment inkset, even if I let the print sit around wet. And that was with matte paper.

The results might be different with dye inks for office-type printers, which might be designed more for vibrancy than permanence. You'll probably have to test ink behavior with the printer and paper you'll be using.

[davescm]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

..........Are inkjet inks still water soluble?

I suppose you could dip a sample and see . If not, you can get fixative spray for prints.

Dave

[Trevor.Dennis]

I bought my laminator as an impulse purchase working under my mantra of 'He who dies with the most toys wins'.  In the six months I've owned, I have used it four times, so I need to take that route as a first option, and was asking about soluble inks more for general information.

I'll have a wee play if I can drag myself away from reading news stories about American politics.

[Benjamin Root]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:.

I'll have a wee play if I can drag myself away from reading news stories about American politics.

It's simple as turing the tv off..that's what I did

All the inks I've used recently were water soluble at least to some extent. Only one way to find out for sure