Reverse Mod Podge Picture Tutorial

A couple weeks ago I showed you my Paris Tea Cart that I did a reverse mod podge treatment on, but I did not do a photo tutorial.  As promised, here it is.  I warn you there are a lot of photos illustrating each step.  While it seems like a lot of work, and it is, it's much faster than hand painting and I love this process because I can mix it up with my lettering and stenciling.  It's inexpensive and you get a big pay off for your time.  This is a large caddy that I painted red and then I came back in with Annie Sloan Old Ochre to put a white box on each side of the caddy.  I forgot to seal the Old Ochre with a clear coat, but it really didn't matter.  The chalk paint was unaffected by all the water that was applied to it.

First of all you need a laser copy.  So select your image and if there is text, be sure to reverse your image (mirror image).  I stop at the Office Depot or Fed Ex office store and do it on their copy machine.  You can enlarge it if you need to, and my Fed Ex office store let's me Email them my image and if I need to stretch it out, etc., they will use Photoshop and do it for me at no extra charge.

So now your image is copied.  Cut it close to your image and paint mod podge on the image itself.  Now place it face down on your piece like I did in the following photo.

 

 I always let mine dry overnight but at the minimum it's recommended you let it sit for six hours.  Now to expose your image.  Wet a wash cloth.  You don't even need to wring it out.  It can be sopping wet.  Wet your paper and start rubbing in a circular motion.  For little projects, use your fingertips.  For these larger projects, I use four flat fingers and rub in a circular motion.  I took a photo of my hand to show you later.  I am doing a four-sided project so my photos sort of jump around but here is each step.  This is what the wet image looks like after I have rubbed it and it's still wet.  You can see the image underneath.  Now walk away and let it dry.

 Now that that is dry, I am returning to find this dry paper that has been rubbed back for the first time.  See how the paper dries and your image is no longer revealed?

 Now repeat the wet washcloth and the rubbing procedure.  The next photo is the paper after I have re-wet it but have not rubbed it again.

 Now I have rubbed the paper and it is still wet.  See how much more of the image you can see?

 I just went around the project and although I took different angles for my photos, this is illustrating how each step looks.  So now that I let the last step dry, I am returning to what looks like this.  You can see the whole image but there is lots of paper remaining.  So re-wet the image  and start massaging again.

 See how each process of doing the same step reveals more and more of the image and there is less and less paper?  You can still see plenty of paper bits on the image, but notice how the cracks are being revealed to give this a perfectly aged look?

 Let it dry again and then repeat.  As the paper layer gets thinner and thinner it dries very fast.  The following photo is my fingers placed on the image and I move them around in a circle to massage gently.

 Here is the final step of the wetting process.  I wet it again and then massage the final bits of paper off.  You can see in the following photo how little paper is left.  I do this wetting process five times.

 After that last step has dried, this is what is left.  A totally smooth, totally transferred image.  If you feel any little paper particles at this point, you can go over it with really fine sand paper.  Do this gently and it will not remove the image.  At this point spray it with a clear coat of your choice or whatever you like to seal your projects with. 

I am not done with this caddy yet.  I want to go back in and do some borders and some printing  When it is finished, I will show you the whole thing.  My suggestion to you, if you want to try this, is to practice on some inexpensive flower pots like my Paris pots you can see here.  You'll get the hang of it in no time.  Happy crafting everyone and thanks for enduring this long drawn out tutorial, but as it's always been said a picture is worth a thousand words.

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