Mixed Media Artist

Today I’m wrapping up the series of tutorials that I’ve been sharing on my favorite image transfer methods. This last one, using clear acrylic caulk as the transfer medium, is a really wonderful and very permanent method, but it’s also more time consuming and a bit more physical. You really need to use a strong and heavy base to receive the image, and I especially recommend a canvas board or masonite. 1. Toner copies work best, so I recommend xeroxing your image. Like the paper transfers that we did, caulk transfers reverse the image, so keep that in mind as you prepare your picture. Paint the surface of your canvas and apply any other collaged images desired before doing the transfer. Leave a good deal of extra paper around your image so that it will be much larger than the caulked area. You need to avoid getting any of the caulk on the back side of the paper when you go to do the transfer. 2. Apply a thin but thorough coat of caulk to the canvas in the spot where the transfer is to b...

Contact paper transfers, aka packing tape transfers, are a very handy method to have in your repertoire. They are very easy to do and use cheap materials. As if that weren’t enough, this is the one method that does not reverse your image!! Toner copies from a copy machine or text and images from magazines work the best. Inkjet prints will be very faint, so you’ll want to print out your text in bold face. Experiment and see what you like best, but my experience leads me to take my inkjet printouts to a copy machine before using them! 1. Place clear contact paper or a strip of clear packing tape over your text/image. Smooth it out and burnish it well. Cut it out to whatever final shape you will desire. 2. Soak the tape in warm water, and rub the back gently but thoroughly. The paper backing will rub off, leaving the pigment behind on the tape. You will probably have to rub and re-rub several times to get all the paper fibers. I've been told that baby wipes perform miracles in remov...

As we saw in the last post about t-shirt transfers to fabric , the transparency transfer method yields a more delicately colored and transparent image. Here's how to do it: 1. Print out your image on the rough side of an inkjet transparency . Prepare the receiving cloth, ironing it flat if needed. 2. Apply a thin but thorough layer of polymer gloss medium to the fabric. Position the image and burnish it well. The fabric will probably be slippery, so hold your image down carefully. 3. Remove the transparency carefully, and top the image with matte medium to cut the shine if desired. This post contains affiliate links Copyright 2007 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Last week I talked about a couple of my favorite methods for transferring images from one paper to another. Today I want to look at transferring to fabric instead. There are two methods that I use more than any other, and I want to start by showing you side-by-side what the final results look like: The first is a t-shirt transfer , and the second is a transparency transfer. It’s easy to see how much more pigmented and opaque the t-shirt transfer turns out to be. Both of these methods will reverse the image, just like the ones we saw last week, so keep that in mind when you are printing out your inkjet picture. We’ll start with the t-shirt transfer method: 1. Print out your image onto the transfer paper with a bit of extra saturation of color. Prepare the receiving cloth, ironing it flat if needed. 2. Use parchment paper to protect your iron and board. Iron the transfer in place, following the manufacturer’s specific directions for heat and time. Peel off the transfer paper....

Photo paper is another alternative for paper image transfers. You will generally get a transfer with much more saturated and even color than with plain paper. This method also reverses the image, so keep that in mind before you print out your picture. There are only a few differences in method from the steps listed above: 1. Print out your image on gloss or soft gloss photo paper. 2. Apply polymer gloss medium in a thin layer to both the image and to the receiving paper. Position and burnish as explained before. 3. Peel off the image paper and clean it up as explained before. Top with matte medium to cut the shine if desired 4. The finished piece, Never Doubt . Copyright 2007 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact. Technorati Tags: mixed media , collage , assemblage , digital art , photography , altered books , art journals

This is a collage piece from one of my art journals that used a ghostly-looking image transfer of a young woman. Some people ask why anyone would want to use a transfer rather than simply collage the actual picture or a copy of it into the work. The usual reason is because the artist is looking for that transparent, irregular quality which simple cut and paste cannot achieve. Look at the image again and notice how you can see right through the woman. This piece was made with an inkjet printout on plain copy paper…nothing fancy, not coated paper or even particularly heavy. This type of transfer will give you the most irregular and ghostly results. In fact, the results are almost always a surprise! This transfer method reverses the image, so if you might want to reverse it in an image editing program if direction is important, especially if there is text involved! 1. Prepare your receiving paper by painting it and adding any other images that you might want to be underneath your ...