Teach Soap

Hi to all. I have been checking posts, but it's my first time to write.

I purchased water soluble papers from BB. I took it to Office Max. It worked great, no bleeding at all.
But an employee at the copy section was not happy to hear that the paper is water soluble. She thought the paper might melt inside by the heat.
It didn't melt and I went back several more times to make copies (total is less than 10 papers). Then, the employee told me that she doesn't appreciate me using the paper because some fibers stacked inside of the copy machine by my previous visits and the machine had just came back from been fixed. I was embarrassed but also scared if she would ask me to pay the damages.

So, I am thinking to buy a laser jet printer, but I don't know which brand's I should buy. I heard HP is not so good. My budget is under $500... Does anybody use laser jet at home for water soluble paper and work great?

Thanks for reading my post!

I use a Lexmark, but it's been chewing my water soluble paper lately or just not pulling it well. I think it's because the paper is so thin and not exactly the right size for the printer. I also only print one sheet at a time, and I only when the machine is fully cool. I do worry about the heat with this paper. Having said that, I can see why the copy place is concerned about their printers.

I'd love to hear from someone who uses inkjet. We have one, but I haven't used it yet. We use it strictly for photo printing at my house. I don't know how it will handle water soluble paper and photo paper. I'm too scared to risk it at this stage.

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Rachel
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Rachel,

I used inkjet (HP Photosmart eprint) and bled in a day.

I've heard of some folks "curing" the paper with hairspray and letting it sit for a day or two.

You would be able to get a really good laser printer in your budget though. I swear by mine for everything but photos. Very handy to have.

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Rachel
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I don't know if this trick will work with the soluble paper or not, but it works for when you want to print on fabric:
Cut a sheet of freezer paper (it's paper on one side and wax on the other side and can be found in the grocery aisle with the cling wrap, foil, etc.) to fit your printer (usually 8.5"x11"). Cut your fabric or, in this case, soluble paper a little smaller than the freezer paper. Turn your iron onto a medium setting and on your ironing board place your soluble paper face down and the freezer paper wax-side down on top of the soluble paper. Lightly press the iron onto the paper for a couple of seconds making sure not to wiggle it. Lift the iron straight up and place on another section for a couple of seconds. The freezer paper should now stick to the soluble paper which will lend it strength and support when going through the printer and may help with keeping the fibers getting jammed in the printer itself.

NOTE: I have never used soluble paper and would try this out myself if I had any on hand so I don't know what the results would be. This is strictly going off of my experience in printing on fabric through my printer. I would definitely do a trial run first, by cutting just a little bit of the soluble paper of the main sheet, ironing the little piece to the freezer paper and checking to see if the heat of the iron burns the soluble paper (turns it brown or off-white in any way), and seeing how easily it releases from the freezer paper. If the soluble paper is tissue thin, it has the possibility of ripping when the freezer paper is peeled away. The nice thing about the freezer paper, though, is that it does not leave a waxy residue on the objects it's ironed to, which is why so many people (including myself) adore it for stenciling! ^_^

As for which printer to buy, it all depends on what you mainly want to get printed (text or photos), how much you're willing to spend on ink (people don't often think about how much ink costs when getting a printer- you have to go by the cost of the cartridges AND by how often you'll have to replace them), if the company offers specialty inks (like the pigment inks that were mentioned on SoapQueen) for that particular model, and if there are any extras you want on it. I love my Epson Stylus NX400. It's a copy/scanner, too, and has slots for my SD/XD cards so I don't have to worry about losing camera cables to get my pictures of my camera. I do have slight feeding problems with it though as the mechanism is a bit finicky and will put paper in crooked, grr... but the cost of the cartridges isn't too bad and they last through a decent amount of paper. If you're going to invest that much money into a printer. Do as much research as you can! This is definitely not something to impulse buy or choose to get because of one review. And good luck!

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Tamra
New to soaping, long time crafter and artisan, avid learner of new things!

My understanding is that there is no such thing as a laser jet printer; it's either inkjet or laser. (Just wanted to clarify, because there's a fairly big difference!). Inkjet printers are the kind typically used at home, whereas laser printers are much faster and tend to do industrial copying. Laser printers are more expensive and for a home business inkjet will work just fine. The printer I use is a Canon PIXMA MG5220 (inkjet) that my boyfriend bought me last month. He's the tech-savvy type that will spend a month compare-shopping something like a computer mouse, so I trust it's a good one. But it does produce nice, clear results. I use it for WS paper, labels, photos, etc.