Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Transferring An Image With Freezer Paper

Last month, I was selected to participate on One Month To Win It.  Woohoo!  Our first challenge was to use images from The Graphics Fairy.  I was excited about this because I already had a couple of projects in mind.  I wanted to transfer an image onto a tea towel and searched all over the web for instructions.  I found a variety of ways to do this.  I settled on using freezer paper - because I already had the supplies on hand.  :-)

If you want to see the original tutorial for this method, head over to see Lesa at Home Frosting.  She added an image to her mouse pad - too cute.  Anyway, here is what I did-




I cut a piece of freezer paper roughly the size of a piece of printer paper - 



I sprayed the non-wax side of the freezer paper with adhesive and stuck it to the printer paper.  I then cut the freezer paper to the exact size of the printer paper.  Again, the wax side is facing out - this will be the side on which the image is printed.


 Next, I stopped at Dollar Tree and picked up a towel - 


And then, the tough part - picking an image!  There are thousands of images on The Graphics Fairy website!  Yikes!  I finally chose this French letter image -


I set my printer to mirror image (actually, this might have been the hardest step for me.  My printer doesn't label it 'mirror image' but 't-shirt transfer'.  I had to Google that to figure it out.  BTW, my copier is a Canon). I hand fed the paper and printed on the wax side.  I slightly wet the towel (I did not use too much water  - just slightly damp) and burnished the image using the back of a spoon - 


I did this lightly.  If you press too hard or for too long, the image will be blurry (yes, I did experiment a little with this).  And here's the finished project - 



I think it turned out so cute - and after wiping off the freezer paper, I can now reuse it!  So, I plan on doing more of these projects.  It was so easy and the possibilities are endless.  This method could be used to add a monogram, dress up a pillow, or customize curtains.  I'll share the rest of my projects from the Graphics Fairy challenge soon - the framed architectural image and the wine bottle dish soap dispenser (which I knocked off from Anthropologie).  

And I'm excited to say that I have already begun to get more organized - I am sticking to my goals!  Yay!  I cleaned out a few kitchen cabinets yesterday -and it felt so good!  I'm going to keep working on it and then I'll share what I've done.  I'll even share some before and after pictures.  Everyone likes to see clean and organized cabinets, don't they?

I've shared this project here - 

Tip Junkie handmade projects