Note: I did this project before I had
planned on sharing it in this blog, so I don’t have “in process” pictures to
show you. Next time, I will be sure to
take pictures as I go so you have a better idea of the steps that I took. Sorry!
We
moved into a new home about two months ago, and I’ve been having tons of fun
organizing and decorating the new house.
It’s been really exciting to make it our own. I’ve been most excited about decorating the
master bedroom. In our old house, I
never really had the chance to decorate the master bedroom because it was
Doug’s room before I moved in (once we were married, I moved into his
house). I never felt comfortable
changing his décor, so we left it mostly the same.
In
the new house, I knew I wanted to make a special retreat in the master for Doug
and I that reflected us as a couple. I
thought it would be nice to incorporate some of our wedding pictures because it’s
the day that we started this journey as a family together and it’s one of the
best days of our lives. It’s sad, but we
didn’t have one wedding picture hung in our old house. I think we both knew that we’d be moving
eventually, so we never got around to it.
Anyway, all of the other pictures in our house are hung in very standard
black frames. They all go together and
it looks nice, but I kind of wanted to do something a little different and
special in the master. Then I remembered
that at one time, I saw that you could transfer a picture to a piece of
wood. I thought that would be the
perfect way to display wedding pictures in our room because it would go with
the décor/style of the house, and also be a unique way to incorporate our
wedding photos.
So I
began the search on Pinterest (I’m addicted and love it!). The ideas on Pinterest were all great, but I
wasn’t really finding what I was looking for, so I did a quick Google search on
how to transfer pictures to wood. I
found a great demonstration/tutorial called “How to Transfer Prints to Wood: An
Awesome Photography DIY Project.” I read
through the article and decided that I would give it a go. At first, I wanted to do one large picture on
a fairly large piece of wood, but after I couldn’t find a large enough piece of
wood that I liked, I decided to do three smaller pictures.
Here’s
what you need:
·
A
laser printed photo (mirror image if you want it to look like the original on
the wood)
·
A
piece of wood (in my case, three)
·
Gel
Medium
·
Sponge
brushes
·
Mod
Podge or a similar sealant
So,
first you need to determine what photo you want to transfer. Like I mentioned before, I decided to do
three smaller pictures rather than one large one because I couldn’t find a
piece of wood large enough that I liked.
Once I chose the three pictures that I wanted to use, I used the program
PhotoScape to make mirror images of the pictures. You wouldn’t necessarily have to do this
step, but if you want the picture to look like the original on the piece of
wood, you have to mirror it. If you
don’t mind if it’s backwards, you can just use the original picture.
Once
I had the mirror images saved, I took them to Staples where I got three 11x14
laser prints made on regular paper (not photo paper). You have to make sure that it is a laser
print (not ink jet), otherwise it will not transfer correctly.
After
I had my pictures ready, I went to Michael’s and chose three wood plaque type
things to transfer the pictures to. I
got two oval and one rectangle, and they all had bark around the outside, which
I liked because it gave it more of a rustic feel. I also needed to get some gel medium. I had no idea what gel medium was, so I
randomly chose this one, and hoped it would work!
I
picked up a few sponge brushes, and made my way home to give this DIY a go!
I started
with just one picture to make sure that it worked and I didn’t waste a bunch of
time doing three if for some reason it didn’t work. I used the sponge brush to
apply the gel medium to the wood. You
want a pretty even coat, that's not too thin and not too gloppy. This part is just a guess. I did a thin, even layer, but it must not
have been enough in some places because part of the photos rubbed off in later
steps. I didn’t mind though because it
gives it a cool, old, weathered look.
Just do your best!
Once
you have the gel medium applied, place the picture onto the wood. This is the scariest part because you want to
get the picture applied straight and with as few air bubbles as possible. I placed the pictures down and then used a
small piece of plastic to work the air bubbles out and get the picture as
smooth as possible.
Then,
you let it dry overnight.
The
next step is the most time consuming.
You take a wet washcloth and dampen the paper. Then, you need to work the paper off of the
wood. I used my fingers to kind of roll
the paper off once it was wet. It’s a
long process and you’ll probably have to dampen the paper a few times to get
all of the paper off. After you do it once, let it dry and you will see that there's still quite a bit of paper left on the wood. Once you get all
of the paper off, you can put a sealing layer on if you like. I used Mod Podge, but it turned out a little
streaky so if I did it again, I would use a different top coat. You don’t
necessarily have to have a sealing top coat, but I thought it might help it
last longer.
Once
the top coat is dry, you’re ready to hang your wood pictures. The wood plaques that I chose did not have
any way to hang, so I used Gorilla Glue to attach sawtooth hangers to the backs
of all of them. It worked pretty well.
The
wood transferred photos turned out pretty good, better than I was
expecting. And I think it’s a pretty
cool look in the master bedroom!
