Craft, Create, Curate with @paperboyo

What first struck @paperboyo was the quality of photos from the PIXMA TS5340 printer.

“I’d forgotten how impactful a print could be from a good printer, when I printed some test photos on the glossy photo paper I was genuinely impressed by the quality. Also, when you think of photo prints it’s the glossy paper that comes to mind, but the Double-Sided Matte paper was something I wasn’t expecting to have the same quality, but it did. Very retro and very cool!”

He was also surprised by how many spontaneous ideas the different types of paper generated.

“Some of my concepts worked, some didn’t, but it was fun thinking of new things to do. Quite a few of the ideas came from a folder on my desktop called ‘Ideas to try someday’! It was refreshing to mix both my old and new ideas.

“For instance, a video story I posted on my Insta page could have been 5 minutes long had I put all the ideas into it. In the end I used items like pencils and letters jumping out from the paper, which was a lot more effective than I first thought it would be. Mainly because the prints had so much detail that 2D images take on a 3D lifelike quality that I hadn’t seen before.”

“The idea came from my love of magic tricks, optical illusions and false perspective photography. The bedrock of my Paperboyo art hacks back to this love of magic and illusion. The photo paper gave me the opportunity to revisit an old hobby that was put into a box and hasn’t seen the light for years.

One thought that @paperboyo had been holding onto for a while was printing his trademark Paperboyo stencils on T-shirts so they interact with the pocket.

“I've had conversations with various T-shirt printers in the past. They all said working with pockets was just too complicated and expensive and were really hands off. So I never really got anywhere with it.”

The Fabric Iron-on Transfers paper gave him the opportunity to experiment with an idea that had been tucked away. This has now been brought to life.

“They’ve come out much better than I thought they would, the designs are very solid and professional looking, and were really easy to produce, which surprised me given what the printers had said.”

@paperboyo has been delighted with the response he has been getting.

“I’ve really enjoyed working with the PIXMA TS5340 printer and genuine Canon media. The fun of craft printing comes through in the content and in the fantastic comments I’ve been getting.

“I’ll definitely continue experimenting in the future with origami, stop frame animation and most of all, the T-shirts.”

So come on, get inspired to craft, create and curate your ideas just like @paperboyo, and share them with us using #LiveAndCreate.