Photo Transferring on Wood

I saw this interesting activity on Pinterest awhile ago and I recently was browsing through the board I made of art projects. When I was in high school I took a photography class and I actually got to transfer a photo onto canvas. A more expensive project it was and very stressful so I was a little hesitant to start a photo transfer onto wood. The instructions and material list was quite simple. I needed a picture printed on a regular piece of paper, a block of wood (smooth, sanded wood is recommended), gel medium, Mod Podge, and some paint brushes.

Instructions

I began by covering the piece of wood with the gel medium and placing the paper with the picture facing down. With my hand and an old plastic card I smoothed out the entire surface of the paper. Getting rid of the bubbles in the process. After these few steps I let it sit to dry overnight. The tiger, lion and lioness, and the giraffe were the pictures I decided to transfer.

The next day I got a slightly wet cloth and soaked the paper with it. I made sure there weren’t any spots left in-soaked. I noticed then how easily the paper came off, leaving the picture underneath imprinted on the piece of wood. I continued to rub with my fingers until it all came off. I took the cloth and cleaned the leftover residue of paper off the wood. Finally, I covered the entire picture with some Mod Podge and let it dry for a bit.

And finally I was done!

These turned out alright. During my learning process I first began with the tiger transferring and I soaked the paper to try and get it off with my fingers. This took forever and the color didn’t go into the wood as well as I expected it to. I was a little disappointed that what was on the wood wasn’t what the picture previously was. When I was working on the giraffe transfer I wanted to throw it into the trash. I wasn’t liking how it was turning out and I had to sit down to keep working on rubbing the paper off. I’m not sure what went wrong. Some possible ideas is that I didn’t add enough gel medium before placing the picture on top, I didn’t let it sit long enough before soaking it, or maybe I shouldn’t have used black.

If I did this project over again there would be some things I would change and differently things I would try.