Danielle's Corner

Through the Craftroom Door Holiday Edition Blog Hop October 23, 2012

Posted by Danielle in Crafts.
Tags: Distress Stain, Liquitex, Mod Podge, photo transfer to wood, TTCRD
48 comments

Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Holiday Edition Blog Hop for Through the Craftroom Door!  What a fun way to introduce the latest edition of the magazine — hope you’re as excited about it as we are!

Through The Craft Room Door 2012 Holiday issue is now available for viewing!! It is loaded with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas cards and holiday tutorials! Included are 4 free digital images  and digital Christmas paper by Anne Fenton and Sandi Huggett which gives a grand total of 24 free digital images by various digital artist in the “Subscribers Only Area”

If you are not yet a subscriber you are really missing out! For $18.00 per year you receive an online bi-monthly magazine filled with awesome creations, tutorials and free digital images. So far the digital images available for download number 24 — with more added each issue.  (That equals to 75 cents per digital image and the magazine is free!) You also have access to all the past issues.  It doesn’t get any better than that!

You can go here to subscribe to the magazine.

You should have reached me from Deonna’s blog.  If you have, then you are in the right place!  If you would like to start at the beginning, then please start at the TTCRD site.

My contribution to the blog hop is a tutorial on how to do photo transfers to wood.  This is definitely a time-consuming project, so please be sure you leave enough time to complete the project to your satisfaction.

You will need the following items:

• smooth wooden surface
• Mod Podge
• Medium Gel Mat
• 0000 grit steel wool
• foam paintbrush
• photograph, printed using mirror image on a laser copier
• 400 grit waterproof sandpaper
• sponge (optional)
• bristle paintbrush (optional)
• acrylic paint (optional)

You will need to start with a smooth wooden surface.  These wooden pieces can be purchased from Michaels or Joann, or you can sand your own.  You may also need some fine grit sandpaper to smooth out any rough edges before you begin with your photograph.  When choosing the wooden surface, try to choose one with an even coloring to it, or some of the wood grain may show beneath the photo itself after you have transferred the image.

This is one of the photos that I chose to transfer to wood.  For this particular method, the photo does need to be printed with a laser printer.  The photo must also be altered so that when it’s printed, it is a mirror image of the original image.

Use the foam brush to place a thin layer of Medium Gel Mat (I chose to use Liquitex) on the photo.  In this case, less is more!

Place the photo, face down, on the wood surface.  Smooth the surface so that there are no air bubbles and let it dry for 8 hours or overnight.  I used an old hotel key card to smooth it out.

The next day, you will begin to remove the paper from the wood.  Do this slowly and carefully if you are working with photographs!  The lightest parts of the photo will be the easiest parts to remove from the wood — which also means that you can easily remove more than intended!  Take this part of the process slowly.  If you are looking for a more vintage look, you can get the paper damp (not wet) and then start removing the paper using your fingertips.  Gently rub the paper and it will begin to come off.  In my trial and error phase, using my fingers removed more of the photograph than I wanted.  My next try was using a washcloth, but the paper gummed it up.  My third try was using a cheap cellulose sponge.  I rubbed it over the photo when it was damp, definitely not dripping wet.  Again, less is more here.  In between rubbing off the paper with the sponge, I let the paper dry completely.  When I tried to rush this step, I wound up ruining the photos by removing more of the paper than intended and leaving blank spots in the transfer.

The first few times you remove the paper, you will get bigger pieces of it coming off.  As you get closer to the toner in the copy of the photograph, you will get less and less paper coming off at a time.  You will need to continue gently removing the paper until you get a dry image that you’re happy with.  If you look at the image while it is still damp and then start the Mod Podge step, when it dries, it will return to whatever it would have looked like when it air dried.

Once you are happy with the dry image, it is time to start layering on Mod Podge, again using a foam brush.  Multiple thin layers work much better than fewer thick layers, by the way… Brush on the Mod Podge, let it dry completely, and then brush another layer on.  Repeat a minimum of five coats of Mod Podge.

Once the layers of Mod Podge are complete, wet sand with 400 grit sandpaper until it is smooth.  Wipe the surface dry.

Polish the surface with 0000 steel wool.  This will remove any leftover ridges from the Mod Podge.  Wipe with a damp cloth.

If you are happy with this as the end result, then you are finished!  For my project, I then painted the sides and backs of the wood with acrylic paint.  After that dried, I applied a coat of Tim Holtz’s Picket Fence Distress Stain to the edges.  This is a photo of some of the 8×10 photos I transferred to wood.  They are displayed on the dessert table of my parents’ 40th anniversary party.

Thanks for hopping along with us for the latest holiday edition of the magazine!  Your next stop along the way will be Colleen’s blog.

So how does this work? Visit each blog and leave a comment. At the end, visit TTCRD magazine and leave your information in Inlinkz and you could win a grand prize of a 1 year subscription to the magazine. The Blog Hop will run for a full week so you will have lots of time to check out each of the Design Team members blogs.

Here is the list from start to finish, just in case you got lost somewhere along the way:

1. TTCRD Challenge Blog
2. Sandi Huggett
3. Jo Ham
4. Roxann Suits
5. Anne Fenton
6. Darlene Lyons
7. Penny Mull
8. Deonna Bemish
9. Danielle Linton (You are here!)
10. Colleen Holmes
11. TTCRD Challenge Blog