The New Product section of Now What? will introduce you to the newest things in the art marketplace and give you some detail. For now, they will be things that we have introduced at Cre8it, or found in our constant haunting of art supply stores. However, this is the place where paid advertising will finally be accepted in our magazine - offering vendors and manufacturers a brand new way to showcase a new product - with room for several pictures and enough space to actually educate you about the product. All paid advertising will be labelled as such so you will know when the information is coming from the manufacturer or vendor. Only innovative products that suit our multi-media art audience will be featured. Interested companies may get more information by emailing: Now What? New Products
What a surprise!
In Now What? Volume 6,we used a material in the “Grace and Innocence” project that we have been hesitant to add to our Cre8it product line - our waterproof inkjet canvas. So, we just asked you to contact us for more info if you were interested - and we have been bowled over by the number of requests. But, wait . . .why were we hestitant?
While many artists we know do have the patience to work with materials that are a little more demanding, you often hear “quick, cheap, and easy” in the paper arts world (a very large part of our customer base). This product is none of the above.

But, oh what an amazing material it is! With it, you can do things you could not do with anything else.

Cre8it’s Waterproof Inkjet Canvas is real canvas - no paper backing like many printable canvas sheets and “canvas” art pads, and it is archival and acid-free. Inkjet images print as beautifully as they would on the finest inkjet papers - but then the image is waterproof and can be painted or glazed over, sewn into art dolls, adhered to canvas that is painted with other media, used in collage and assemblage, altered books, etc.

The possibilities seem endless and we have only begun to explore them. We will be sharing our adventures with you in future project articles.
You first saw our waterproof inkjet canvas used for the photo in the “Grace and Innocence” project in Volume 6. We printed the photo on the canvas in sepiatone, and then painted over it with an acrylic wash to better match the tone to the art piece. This picture shows the wash before smoothing out the streaks - so you can see how wet the application was.
Although our manufacturer would like us to call it “water-resistant”, our experience tells us that we can call it waterproof, so we do.

We have found that even images printed on regular inkjet printers (not the water resistant inks) are smear proof - even under running water.

The picture on the right is a good example. This altered photo was printed on an Epson 880 with regular inkjet ink.

The colors did not run or smear when the print was held under running water and lightly rubbed with my thumb - even the red and black which are the inks most likely to smear.

Amazing - and fun!

So, what’s the downside?

Expense, for one. The least expensive water-resistant inkjet canvas we could find on the web sells for $37.70 for a ten pack of letter size sheets - $3.77/sht! And that was the only one that even came in sheets at all.

We can do better than that if we keep the product retail only, and our canvas retails for $2.50/sht in Three Packs ($7.50/pack). That’s a lot of money - and so you want to do a lot of planning before running a sheet through your printer - in order to get the most out of every square inch.

And running it through the printer is the second thing that’s no piece of cake. The sheet is thick and needs a “feeder strip” to go through the printer - even on manual feed (see how to make and use one by clicking the link below). That’s not a huge deal, but it’s not as easy as your everyday printing job.

If you think our Waterproof Inkjet Canvas might be for you, just click its name to get more information of shop for some.
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