DIY: Wood Photography

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!