Pictures from "Transferred Secrets"

Karol's blender pen transfer looks like a
great colored pencil drawing

Last Saturday I met with Karol and Cynthia for a wonderful afternoon of playing with photo transfers. We covered three kinds of transfer: gel medium with inkjet prints, clear packing tape with laser and magazine images, and blender pen with laser images. Here are a few of their experiments:

These gel medium transfers have
the effect of tinted photos.

Cynthia's gel medium transfer figure has packing tape transfer wings.

Cynthia made use of dried teabags also to excellent effect.

Here are some of the sample transfers I made:

I did this one over a transfer that didn't work,
leaving the striated image under the paint. The
main image is a gel transfer and the text is a
packing tape transfer.

Packing tape transfers from magazine
images with a band of fabric added at the bottom.

The images of people and the old window are
packing tape transfers. I also used an old dress pattern,
rubber stamps, teabags, novelty tape, a dried flower,
and some vintage lace.

This blender pen transfer is from a laser black
and white copy, as is the image below.

There are so many ways to transfer images! I feel like I could collage forever with just these three methods, but I do enjoy many more and am always learning new ones. I love the way transfers add mystery and subtlety to my collage pieces.

Here's how to do a gel medium transfer:

I use Golden soft gel medium in semi-gloss or gloss. Coat the surface of the support where you want to put the transfer. (We found that mat board works great for experiments.)

Place the ink jet image face down into the gel and even it out. Burnish firmly for a few minutes--I like to use a plastic paint spatula, but we had great success last weekend using a credit card.

After burnishing, use light sandpaper gently on the back of the transfer to loosen the paper a little. Then spray water on the back of the transfer and gently, so gently start to peel away the backing. You will see your transferred image begin to emerge!

After the backing is off, I coat the transfer with the gel medium to seal it. The gel medium transfer is the trickiest method of the three, but when it works well it produces a lovely, ghostly image.