Image Transfer :: Paper to Canvas

30::365::72

original image can be viewed here

I take a lot of photos.  A lot.  Unfortunately, many of them stay stored digitally for far too long before they are printed.  However, I could not resist our holiday photo this year.  I mean, how sweet are those little faces!?!

This is not a difficult project, but it does require some time and patience.  I worked on it after the kids were in bed over the course of a couple of nights.

Materials:

• print out of a photo or image of your choice on regular copy paper (not photo paper)
  I ordered a large engineering print from Staples.  The image will be reversed.  If your image has words, numbers, or anything you want to keep true to the original, you might want to flip your image on your computer before sending it to the printer.
• canvas about the same size as your photo
  (ours is a canvas board from a craft store)
• Mod Podge
• gel medium
  (I used Golden, matte.)
• sponge brush
• spray bottle

How To:

1. Coat your canvas in an even layer of the gel medium.
2. Quickly lay your photo image side down over the gel medium.  Do your best to smooth out any wrinkles.
3. Leave it there for a few hours.  I left ours until the next evening.
4. Use your spray bottle to wet the paper a little at a time and gently rub it away, leaving just the image on the canvas.  Some of the image will probably rub away too.  This is just part of the process.  I’ll be honest here, this part of the project is tedious.  I had plans to make six of these for holiday gifts.  I ended up making one gift and one for our own home.  It was totally worth the effort, but I had no  idea how much time it would take to get all that paper off!
5. Once your canvas is free of paper and dry, coat with mod podge and let dry.
6. Viola!  Done!  Display and enjoy!

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