Image Transfer Techniques for your Art Journal

I’ve been experimenting and practicing doing images transfers onto my pages recently.  It’s been a lot of fun, even the failures that I’m frankly a little embarrassed to share… but you live and learn, right?

I thought it would be fun to add some pictures of my husband and I, since he is so often the blessing I am referring to.

• Originally I grabbed one of the extra photos I had lying around from our wedding announcements.
• I had already gessoed my page, and now I wanted to try and transfer the image from the photo to the paper.  I brushed gel medium in a small square and then added the photo on top, going over and over it with my fingers to make sure I got out any bubbles and that it was as tight against the page as possible.
• I waited maybe a minute and then peeled back the photo- peel being the perfect word here, because the whole thing came off like a sticker.  No part of the image had adhered to the page.  I put the photo back down and went over and over it again with my hand, my fingers, and any tool I could find.  I waited a little longer this time and tried again-  nothing.  My first attempt at transferring an image was a total bust.  But, I had learned something- don’t use glossy photos if you want to transfer an image.
• So, I began again.  This time, I printed the photos I wanted on plain paper, cut them to size, and did the same thing I had done with the photos, making sure I didn’t get any gel medium on the back of the paper.
• This time turned out much better, as you can see.  I peeled the paper off bit by bit until I had to use a little water to rub off the excess with my fingers.  The paper stuck more in some places than others, and I rubbed a little harder in some areas than others, hence some of the less colorful spots, but I loved the results, and I definitely have a better idea of what I’m doing when it comes to image transfer.  :)

I tried again with my next pages, though I did things a little differently.  First I crumpled the page, and then I watermark stamped all along it.  You can’t really see it in this picture, unfortunately-  I need a better camera.  My birthday is coming up soon, though… :)

I used a few of Tim Holtz’ distress inks to add color, and I love how they mixed with each other and the wrinkles on the page.  Then I worked again on transferring some images- this time, some sheet music.

There are some things I need to remember.  For example, I used gesso on the page with our pictures, but I didn’t on the wrinkled pages, and that made a huge difference, not only to the images but also to the overall result of each page.  The wrinkled page is much less solid- more fragile, if that makes sense. So if you’re ever wondering if gesso is an essential ingredient on your art journal pages, remember this- Yes.  It is.

I must confess, I did try this technique on vellum while working on my mixed media journal, and while the image did transfer, rubbing off the excess paper was really tricky because the vellum was so smooth.  I kept rubbing off whole sections of my image, which was fairly annoying.  So, I probably won’t use vellum with this technique in the future, unless I find something awesome some other artist has done- which, frankly, is entirely possible.

This technique is totally worth a shot if you’ve never done it before, and are looking for something to add more texture and dimension to your journal/scrapbook page/artwork.  Don’t be afraid to get messy!