Welcome SNR Readers!!!!

Hi there! 

Thanks for stopping by!!  Welcome to all who arrived here by way of Scrapbook News and Review! 

For those of you who may be new here, I'm Heidi.  I'm a papercraftaholic.  I don't purport to be particularly good at it, but I love it and try my hand at anything I can!!!!  I'm mainly a scrapper but an occassional card sneaks in there and lately I'm really getting into art journaling.  

So, today, I thought I'd share one of my newest technique obsessions: gesso/paint transfers.  What's that, you say?  It's the process of transferring a picture - usually a photocopy - into gesso or paint. 

You need to use a photocopy, or if you are lucky enough to have one, a laser printed copy of the picture you want to use.  This technique doesn't work very well with ink jet printers because it's the powder from the toner used in copy machines and laser printers that transfers into your gesso. 

Closely crop your photo so as little of the white paper will show as possible.  If you have a clearly defined edge on your picture go ahead and cut it out.  If not, as is the case with my camera pictures, I like to tear the picture out which gives any white paper surrounding your picture more of a feathered edge.  (Note: Your picture will be reversed when doing the transfer so if you have any text in your picture, print it reversed.)

Next, paint your base with gesso (or paint) and immediately lay your picture onto the gesso.  Make sure you have complete contact between your picture and the gesso, smoothing out any air bubbles with your fingers.  Allow your gesso to completely dry, at least a few hours but it's best if you can leave it alone overnight. 

After the gesso has dried, saturate the photocopy with water.  I have a little spray bottle I use for this.  Once saturated, use your finger to rub off the paper.  Keep rubbing and re-saturating with water until most of the paper has rubbed off.  I say most because if you rub too hard you run the risk of rubbing your image off. 

And voila, your image has been transferred into your gesso.

I made this for a set of mini canvasses I'm making of various vintage camera images. 

You can then paint and embellish as desired.

This is still a work in process - I'll share when I have them all finished!

I also recently used this technique on a layout I made for my friend and Pink Ninja Master Ally's birthday. 

Does this woman not have the most beautiful eyes or what?  (Or eye in this case, lol.) 

I transferred the image of her eye directly into the paint on the paper.

As you can see, I rubbed just a tad too much in one spot but I think it lends to the overall effect. 

I also used the gesso transfer on the junque journal I recently shared.

I hope you enjoyed my quick mini tutorial on gesso transfers.  I feel so lucky to be a staffer for Scrapbook News and Review because you can find lots of these types of tutorials and projects in the pages of the magazine every month.  And there's always lots of discussion on the forum about techniques and ideas, too.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope to see you again!

- Heidi