Reverse Mod Podge Transfer on Wood

I've been experimenting with transfer processes a lot lately and although I'm not thrilled with the way this turned out, I learned some wonderful things that I will pass on to you.  I started with an old pine cabinet door.  I still have my blown up image and I am going to try this on a painted surface as well.

 Look how crisp the lettering is on the pine, and not only is it crisp but it's in color too!  I found an image on Pinterest and saved it to my computer.  I emailed my local Fed Ex office store the image and gave them the dimensions of my door and asked them to print it in reverse mirror image.

 They printed it on a kind of glossy paper and it was $14 to have them re-size and print the image.  Next time I will have them re-size it and then break it in half and print it on 11 X 17 paper.  That would have been approximately $5.  I copied the glossy paper image that Fed Ex did for me onto two pieces of 11 x 17 paper so it would be on dull paper and I could retain the expensive one.

 So here is what I learned.  You can see below I applied the mod podge but only on the printed part.  Then I laid it against the wood face down.  What I should have done was mod podge the entire piece of paper.  The reason for that is where there was no mod podge the color of my wood was a totally different color and you could easily tell I had pieced my image.

 See how I didn't get the mod podge exactly everywhere.  So I tried to cover it with paint and sand it back and now it looks old but not exactly what I wanted it to look like.  It's okay because I learned tons from doing this project.

 

I let the paper and the image set up overnight.  Then I laid a wet washcloth over the paper and began to wet the paper and roll it with my fingertips in a circular motion being careful not to rub off the printing.  When I felt I had rubbed enough off, I wiped the board down and set it aside to dry.  When it dried, I could see there was more paper residue so I repeated the process with the washcloth and the fingertip massage and the drying of the board.  It took me about six rounds of this process to remove all the paper so be patient and work slow.  My middle name should be Impatient, so if I can do this so can you.  I sealed it with a clear coat and had I not messed up with the piecing of the pattern, I would have been thrilled with the outcome. 

Thanks for visiting.  I hope you find inspiration when you stop by. 

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