Hello and welcome to the CLASSroom! With Valentine's Day approaching, I wanted to do something "love" or Valentine themed with some recent photos I had taken of my daughters. After stumbling across a photo transfer to canvas technique, I decided to combine the two ideas into this fun home decor craft!
(Photo credit: Susan Karlsson from Five Days Later Studio)
You will need these supplies:
1. A photograph copied or LASER toner printed (NOT home inkjet printed) onto regular 20 lb. copier paper. It is the toner in regular (or color) copiers and laser printers that makes this transfer technique work. Just remember the photo will be reversed, once transferred, so if you want your canvas to turn out exactly like the photo, you will need to print the photo in reverse.
2. Stretched canvas on a 1.50" wood frame, any size you wish to work with -- Ellen has several to choose from. I used the triple primed (white) kind like these 4x4 Pair. Ellen also carries these sizes 10x10, 4x6, 5x7 of natural canvas (unprimed). I have to assume they would work just as well since I know this technique also works on the same type of natural canvas FABRIC (See **Note at the bottom of this post).
3. Claudine Hellmuth's Studio Multi-Medium Matte (or I used Gloss)
4. Paint brush,
5. Scraper to smooth out any bubbles
6. Mister filled with water
7. Sponge, soft cloth or your fingers!
Since I was going for a Valentine look, I turned my photos a sepia color and then re-colored the red accents so they would stand out. (You can find a quick tutorial for that here). You can use sepia, black & white or full color photos -- whatever you like, it doesn't matter.
Once you have the photo copied and trimmed to the size you want transferred, paint a generous amout of the gel Multi-Medium all over the canvas. You want enough gel so that the photo is thoroughly saturated, but not so much that it's dripping down the canvas!
Next, place the photo face down onto the Multi-Medium and smooth out any bubbles or wrinkles from the center, out, with the scraper. Be careful not to pull or tug too much, as the thin copier paper might tear easily. Make sure all areas of the photo are "adhered" to the canvas well (click on any photo for a larger view):
My original photo is on the right above, left is the canvas painted with Multi-Medium and the photocopied photo smoothed and "adhered" to the canvas.
A word of warning here: If your scraper picks up any gel Multi-Medium that may ooze out from under the edges of the paper, wipe the scraper off and DO NOT spread it around on TOP of the copied photo! With gel medium on top AND under your photo, this will cause a white spot where the paper is really "glued" to your canvas (I had a few of those spots)!
Then, let dry! It will probably take a few hours, depending on the size of your photo and how much gel medium you used. To be safe, I let it dry overnight.
Once the Multi-Medium is dry, generously mist the paper with water and start to carefully wipe/peel away the paper with a soft cloth, sponge or your fingers -- whichever works best for you. But "carefully" is the keyword here -- if you rub too hard, you will rub off the photo! But having some of the photo rub off isn't the end of the world -- I think it makes the canvas look like it is a real "painted" look and some of the image missing gives the canvas character!
I started with a soft cloth in the first step but then switched to my fingers in later repeated rubbing (see below).
Water is your friend here -- if the paper is stubborn and doesn't want to peel off easily, re-wet it and let the water soak in, then try gently rubbing the paper off again. Let the canvas dry again.
If it dries looking "cloudy" (like the photo above) you may have to repeat the process a few more times, to work off all the layers of paper (this is where my fingers could feel the paper better and work it off easier, so not to rub off the photo!).
Once thoroughly dry and you are satisfied with your results, paint a final protective sealing coat of the Multi-Medium over the top of the canvas. Don't worry, it will dry clear!
I added my girls names with painted chipboard letters. To do this, I painted the letters with a base coat of Claudine's Studio Painterly Pink acrylic paint (that's my drying canvas in the top of the photo below!):
Then I used Claudine Hellmuth's Modern Red acrylic paint (it's a little more on the peachy orange end of the red scale), because it matched the red colors in my photos:
and painted it onto Hero Arts Antique Brocade Cling Stamp and stamped over the pink painted letters, for a two-toned pattern look:
The finished letters were glued onto the canvas with Glossy Accents (you can also see the great canvas texture you get with this technique!):
Here are close-ups of the completed canvases -- oldest daughter:
And youngest daughter:
NOTE: For a different look, try using Claudine Hellmuth's acrylic paint COLORS for this transfer technique ... Claudine says they work, too! You can find a tutorial Claudine did HERE.
** NOTE: After completing my project, I discovered both Julia and Ellen have used this same basic technique here in the CLASSroom before (great minds think alike)! You can find Julia's Dec 2009 project HERE where she used a black & white photo on a FABRIC canvas album for a lovely vintage look. And Ellen created an adorable photo pennant banner HERE with fabric canvas -- she had success using a color copy of her photo she printed with her home inkjet printer!
I hope you'll have as much fun with this technique as I did!
~ Sharon
Additional Supplies:
Maya Road David chipboard letters,
Claudine Hellmuth Painterly Pink & Modern Red Studio Acrylic Paint
Hero Arts Cling Stamp-Antique Brocade,
Ranger Glossy Accents,
Seriously, petting it thru the monitor is just not the same thing.
