What do you use to make prints on?

i have been printing on foil for awhile now
and i am looking for some new ideas
i know that foil is probably most widely used,
but i'm also curious to see if that is true

i use foil, its easy to clean before printing

[bob]

I use heavy duty foil but I read from shed the monkey that the inside of postal tyvek is good to print on also.

[sandman]

i been using foil too. Seems to work fine and easy.

Texas Bob beat me to it! LOL! Yes, Tyvek is awesome for a couple reasons. It breathes (which plastic, glass, and foil do not) which means the print dries very quickly. It does not disintegrate in water like typing paper (which many people use) and is free! I love printing...almost my favorite part of this whole hobby. Tyvek IMHO is perfect for printing.

[grave]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I love printing...almost my favorite part of this whole hobby<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
almost = eating is much funner
lol
im with ya man, nothing like lifting a cap and seeing a dark lovely precious print.

foil has always been great in my dreams

[Lazlo]

Autoclavical bags are my next adventure in printing.

[mycota]

Best prints are IN A sporebag, follow along.

Print on autoclave bag material (about 6 to 7 inchs square).

Once print is laid, cover dry print with another square of same (alc swabbed first &amp; allowed to evaporate).

Double seal all edges with IMPULSE SEALER.

When you want spore solution.

In aseptic conditions, G/B, or under flow hood.

Swab outer bag with alc.

Have 20 CC (or whatever size you prefer) sterilized syringe full of "sterile" water, ready.

Pierce autoclave bag material with syringe needle on a CORNER.

Inject 20 CC into sealed square.

Reseal with impulse sealer (or with good tape - if you must).

Massage bag to mix spores into solution.

You now have bag of spore water to extract from &amp; use whenever you please.

Store in refrigerator.

Extract with sterile syringe.

When fluid level is LOW, refill &amp; reseal (as above).
Minimizes exposure to AIR.

Beat this:

This doesn't beat that for convenience of making syringes, but tyvek has its advantages. Here is one that your method doesn't have...conservation of space while printing an entire flush.



The larger ones are about 2.5 inches in diameter. When you don't know what is gonna print, its always nice to just plop down ALL the nice boomer tops and see what happens. Clean scissors and gloves are all that is needed to cut this into multiple single prints each of which can be put into a sterile baggy or a bag similar to yours or an envelope or whatever your favorite way of storing them is.

Here is my personal favorite and stealthy too...I spose I should make a tek for this but here is the final product:




MUCH stealthier as a bookmark than as a purple bag in the fridge. I give these out by the dozens to friends, family, etc... and MOST do not know that there are magic spores within the cool bookmark. The tyvek print is inside a little acid-free plastic pouch and then cold laminated with the cartoon.

Yes it is a lot of work for being able to store prints stealthily for YEARS, and literally haveing a spore Library (that pun always gets me!!!) and if ever I lose everything to a fire, I will always be able to find one of these bookmarks somewhere. Makes sending in the mail nice too.

Plus...don't you think that spore prints have an artistic value too? They are very cool either way.

So, to recap, Mycota has probably the best way of dealing with quick turnaround and making of syringes IMHO. I think MY way has it's merits also. Tyvek will give the spores up very quickly to ultrasonic energy in a clean bag too. But really, foil and other methods all work too. It really depends on what you plan to do with the print. Is it going to be around for a while? You using it for trade bait? Gonna frame it and put it on display? LOL

I sure think they're purty.

[python]

mycota, instead of the rubbing can't you place the autoclavable bag into a ultrasonic for spore dispersal?

JoeDirt, I love your avatar, what pretty little guy you have there! I have a female slider myself, she's a doll

And these prints are so pretty, I agree with a previous poster, they are like artwork in and of themselves

thx infidel
i really like chelonians
i have 2 yellow-bellied sliders (male &amp; female),
an eastern mud, and a spiny soft-shell.
also have a sulcata tortoise

those are some nice prints

so far we have:
foil, tyvek, and autoclave bag material

anyone use anything else?

[morthos]

Would you believe lunch baggies?

I select a cap that's started dropping spores. I put about 15ml pre-sterilized water in a clean shot glass, and stir in a blob of betadine. I swab the cap with this, making sure it's not too wet afterwards.

I cut the cap so that it will rest on a 1/4 inch of stem, to keep the gills off the plastic - otherwise the spores would stay on the gills when I lift out the cap later.

So I insert the cap into the bag, and seal it. 36 hours later I remove the cap and reseal. Then, with a syringe full of sterilized water, I pierce the bag near the top and inject the water into the bag. I remove the syringe &amp; seal the hole with electrical tape. I mix the print with the water, then pierce the bag again and remove the solution.

This is done in a glovebox as a precaution. It's a pretty easy method, and because it's not a freezer bag, the print will dry out over time.

Shed....YOU'D be the man to print and put em on cartoons...I love it bro.

[imok]

In the archives a member reported using a aluminum can.
He would cut the ends off and then in half.
Then he would clean the surface and print on it.
He would then fold the aluminum over to protect the print.
Then to use it he would open the aluminum and scrape
off the amount of print he wanted to use and refold
the aluminum.

Link:Spores, Prints &amp; Syringes How to make your own syringes from prints and how to get prints from shrooms(become totally self sufficient with this information)

[hydrodad]

I open a plastic package of sterile surgical gloves and use the inside of the inside paper wrapper that contains the actual gloves. It is a sterile field. When I do this I am already masked.

[cutty]

I just use a fresh piece of paper from the middle of my printer paper stack.

[Lazlo]

I just did some autoclavical bags and it seems to easy. Fill up and sonicate. POW, there you go.

[mycota]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I just did some autoclavical bags and it seems to easy. Fill up and sonicate. POW, there you go.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

AGREE ^^^

Some of the bigger suppliers use acid-free paper...

www.sporelab.com

[mushit]

Free Acid?!!! Where???........
Oh, you said acid free. Thats no fun.. Hee Hee.

[~Hippie3]

shedthemonkey-
think you could upload
your now-missing pix
again
before i copy this to the vaults ?

[shedthemonkey]

Yes I can...just on dialup right now so lets wait till later...I should make a visual tek...hrmmm...give me till tomorrow, and I should be able to do better than what was posted under "somecallme" above. Give you a step by step tek.

[Soliver1]

I'll print 15-20 caps at a time in a clear plastic shoebox on small squares of tyvek.
Turn the box upside down, put the tyvek squares on the lid, place caps, and place the
other half on there, snap shut.

I clean the box out with ISO first, and the tyvek too. I let the tyvek dry IN the upside
down box, just leave it cracked a bit for evaporation, usually takes 10 minutes.

When the caps have printed, I'll move them to an identical box, on new squares.
Let the prints dry for an hour or so, then use sterile hemostat (tweezers will work) to
put them into ziploc bags which come sterile from the box.

To make syringes, just clean the outside of the baggie as outlined in the posts above,
squirt in H2O, massage the spores into the water, suck back up, and there you go.
Never had a contam'd print using this method.

I stick toothpicks in the mushroom caps to move them around w/o touching them.
The box is upside down to make moving the caps easier, in case you were wondering

sol

[anticheffy]

lately I have been cutting squares out of food saver bags, wiping them with alcohol and letting them dry then printing on them. Put another sterile square of foodsaver plastic over it once its done and dry , and seal it up with the foodsaver sealer. Then to use them I just shoot sterile water directly into the little pouch , swish it round and suck it bach up into the sirynge. Works great, minimal exposure to air.

[reefer]

Got a print from a friend that was on a glass square in a plastic bag. Not sure where he got it but it looked like a double-wide microscope slide. It was really easy to extract the spores and make syringes.

[shedthemonkey]

Okay, here is the promised bookmark tek: (this would look so much better in-line than all thumbs at the end but we will make do)

Pic 01: Find a print. I prefer pretty ones, but any relatively clean one will do. Oh lookie...a few prints to choose from. Let's use the upper right corner one.

Pic 02: Free the print with clean (alcohol'd) scissors. Tyvek cuts sooo nice with sharp scissors. Clean latex gloves are recommended at this point.

Pic 03: Trim around the print to clean it up a bit. Gotta be careful not to smudge the pretty print.

Pic 04: Fresh, never used, 9-pocket-per-page baseball card holders makes a great sacrificial item for clean acid free plastic pockets.

Pic 05: If you cut carefully on the impulse seal lines on the sheet, you can separate the pockets with seals on both sides. Not always needed but a useful trick.

Pic 06: Cut the pocket a little larger than the print...in this case it will use most of half of the pocket. This pocket is now sealed on two sides.

Pic 07: This requires a bit of finesse not to smear the print. Open the pocket with one hand and hold a finger in the top to keep the pocket open. With the other hand and clean tweezers, carefully manuver the print into the pocket to the sealed edges. One sealed edge is all that is really needed to get this to work right in the comming roller squish.

Pic 08: Finished pocket...trim a little larger than the print.

Pic 09: Choose from the available blank bookmark stock...in this case from some of the wife's recent doodles. That pot o' gold looks like it is the best fit. Often she leaves blank spots and certain size prints work better on certain ones...

Pic 10: The cold rolling laminator. This is the input side. The main trick is that at least one sealed pocket side has to be AWAY from the rollers (toward bottom of picture) so the rollers don't squish the print out of the pocket...have lost a few prints to this roller-monster until that was figured out.

Pic 11: Push the blank up against the rollers and re-situate the print to the right position. Slowly roll the handle...

Pic 12: until the print comes out the other side. You gotta keep your eye on the print pocket to make sure it doesn't shift too much when it contacts the rollers. Once the rollers grab the pocket, then it's safe to roll a little faster.

Pic 13: Here is the built in little cutter...I rarely use it...instead doing about 10 prints one after another through the rollers and cutting with scissors between two bookmarks when it gets unweildly.

Pic 14: There is lots of extra plastic from the roller size of 9 inches wide. Needs a trim.

Pic 15: Finished Product. Mark the strain before with normal pen on the paper (if you remember) or afterward with a sharpie or paint pen. Put it in your favorite (or latest) book or use for trade bait or whatever.

I say again: this is way overkill and a bit more expensive than other methods. High coolness factor and some stealth make it worth the extra effort for me.

Prints don't hafta be complicated...unless you are a Psilly Monkey.

[destroy_erase_improve]

id like to git me hands on some of dem lucky charms

nice writeup
great setup. just gotta move quick to get the print into the sheathing quickly so no nasties fall on it via transit.
cut and cover cut and cover!

[~Hippie3]

great pix
copied to the vaults [spores]

[altered_states]

This could be the beginning of myco-blotter art.

The beauty of the spore print never ceases to amaze me.
So chaotic, yet so perfect.

Anybody read "Chaos" by James Gleich?

Anyway, my point...

Good shit monkey
Good shit

[~Hippie3]

now i'm partial
to foil in a baggie,
very easy.
seal opened tinfoil print in ziplock
then inject water
rub to dislodge spores
suck water back into syringe.
easy as pie.