Say Yes to Life

The writing in the background says "say yes to life." I wrote it with an eyedropper full of white permanent ink. The soft gel transfer is a laser print of an old photo. The last time I transferred a photo, I didn't like the way the type was very bold across the woman's forehead, to the point where I thought it was distracting. To prevent that from happening on this transfer, I painted a thin coat of white acrylic over the girl's face before the transfer. Then, when I applied the transfer facedown, the white paint was underneath the toner. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if it doesn't--I'll take some photos to illustrate it better.

I think it worked really well. The only thing I will do differently next time is maybe mix a little titan buff with my white paint. She looks rather ghostly like this, I think...

More from "Act Natural" at the Land of Lost Luggage

Two kinds of transfers on this one--a gel medium transfer (the music) and an acetone transfer. Love the grid lines from when I laid this over the side of one of those mesh cube things and sanded! Then glazed over it and the glaze sunk into the raw paper...

And the paper at the top is from spray painting stencils that I cut myself!

Collage No. 27

Mixed media collage, 4" x 6" on 190 lb. watercolor paper

I'm going to have to make some type of schedule for myself--I need to treat coming out to the studio more like a job, otherwise I won't get anything done. Summer is contagious, and if I hang out with the kids too much, I'll catch it...

Actually Joel's hardly been here--school ended Friday, Saturday he played five games in a football passing tourney, Sunday he played a baseball doubleheader, and he's had both football and baseball practice every day. (Tonight at 6 p.m. he goes for his third practice of the day!)

Jenny's just cruising, enjoying herself, but Katie wants something to do--"What are the symptoms of cabin fever, Mom? Because I think I've got it!"

Some tutorials coming up--one on Photoshop, and one on Image Transfers--stay tuned!

Emulsion-Type Transfers

These pix illustrate yet another way to make transfers from your inkjet printer using Jet Print Photo Multi-Project Glossy paper. I get this inexpensive paper at my local Walmart, but you can evidently order it online. (This is the same paper I talked about using for gel medium transfers and water transfers).

As you can see from the second picture, this particular mode of transfer results in an actual transparent film very similar to a Polaroid emulsion transfer. As an aside, let me say that I only use Epson printers with Durabrite inks; I'm not positive that this would work with other printers (like HP) whose ink runs in water.

Step One: print your image out on the Jet Print Photo paper. It doesn't need to be reversed, as in most transfers, because the emulsion will lift off the paper and can be placed down just as it was on the original.

Step Two: Coat your image with Golden Soft Gel Gloss Medium. I usually do four coats: horizontal strokes, vertical strokes, and both directions of diagonal strokes. Let this dry for at least overnight. This is the part I'm not good at. I don't like to wait.

Step Three: Trim the image so that it has a smallish margin around the edge. Then soak it in a pan of water, checking it occasionally until you can begin to separate the emulsion from the paper. This is not peeling off just a section of the paper. What you should be pulling off will not be opaque. Treat this gently and don't let it get folded back on itself, as it will stick. Unless, of course, you like that wadded-up look, in which case you don't need to be careful...

I usually let this sit on a non-absorbent surface to dry a little bit, as the medium may have absorbed some water.

Step Four: Attach this emulsion to whatever substrate you wish to use. In this case, I'm going to mount my digital photomontage "Visitor" to a canvas using acrylic medium. You can underpaint the canvas before you attach the emulsion, or even collage under it.

So, to summarize: You need the following materials:

JetPrintPhoto Paper, Multi-Project Glossy
Golden Soft Gel Medium Glossy (Other mediums may work, but they really should be glossy, as whatever makes it glossy also makes it more stretchable).
Digital image that you want to transfer to another surface
Inkjet printer

Any questions, let me know.

Gel Medium Transfers Edited

After viewing the More Scarlet Fever post, Tammy asked if the gel medium transfers would work on ceramics. The answer is yes! I've done these on ceramic tiles for coasters. Both of these images are toner copies; the colored one is a collage I did of my grandfather, the other is a photo of my dad when he played baseball at Michigan State.

Many of you may already know how to do gel medium transfers, but for Tammy and anyone else who's interested, here's how:

Resize the images in your computer imaging program. Print them out with the image reversed (mirror image)--if you don't, then once you've done the transfer the image will be backwards. This is especially important if you have text in your image! Have toner copies made of them (ink jet copies will not work with this method!) Trim or tear the edges of your image. Apply a thin coat of gel medium (I use Golden Regular Gel Matte) to both the image and your surface. Place the paper face down on the tile and smooth down (I use a rubber brayer), carefully wiping away any gel medium that gets on the backside of the paper (I keep a box of baby wipes at my art table).

Let this dry completely--overnight is best. Although I've proceeded after only a few hours, the results are better if you wait. Dampen the surface of the paper and carefully begin to rub away the paper. The toner stays on the tile because it is embedded in the gel medium! Sometimes you have to let the surface dry so you can see where there are leftover fibers and then rewet it and keep rubbing.

I seal my tiles with clear spray paint from Walmart. These are pretty tough, though I wouldn't run them through a dishwasher. These coasters are the first ones I made and we've been using them for several years. I purposely aged the baseball picture by scratching away at the edges, but as you can see on the other tile, straight edges are possible too.

There's also a way to do this on not-so-flat surfaces--let me know if you're interested in that info.

P.S. for A Citizen: I've used both sealed tiles like these and tumbled marble tiles. I prefer the rough look of the tumbled marble, but the process works fine on both. I imagine you could try this on a slick piece of tile, but I'd be concerned about long term adherence. I bought both kinds of tiles at Lowe's.

More Scarlet Fever

The littlest one and I both have scarlet fever, now. We started antibiotics yesterday, so should feel better soon. She already seems pretty perky; I have a wicked headache.

Was working on some transfers this weekend. I took some photos I'd taken of trees, tweaked them in Photoshop and then did gel medium transfers. This one looks pretty good; the others are still in progress. I'm going to work at learning more Photoshop stuff in these next few months--is anyone else interested in joining me?