Contact paper transfers
March 20, 2007 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Home & Living
Technique Tuesday!
Contact paper transfers, aka packing tape transfers, are a very handy method to have in your repertoire. They are very easy to do and use cheap materials. As if that weren’t enough, this is the one method that does not reverse your image!!
Toner copies from a copy machine or text and images from magazines work the best. Inkjet prints will be very faint, so you’ll want to print out your text in bold face. Experiment and see what you like best, but my experience leads me to take my inkjet printouts to a copy machine before using them!
Hi Cindi ,
Great tut , only thing missing is that you can ues a heat gun on the transfer after it is adhered to your final surface. The heat gun will remove the plastic (plastic will curl up and away from the image and can be removed completely leaving only the glue with the words or image attached . Then coat with final coat of transfer liquid or gel .
You know, I haven’t found that to work too well if I’m using inkjets, since the image is already so faint. But great technique with toner prints… thanks for adding the info
fwiw, the heat gun will only work on cellophane tapes NOT plastic ones. Though it DOES give a very cool mottled affect to contact paper and the heavier packing tape.
Which may also explain my “spotty” results with the technique! My preference is just to cover the tape with matte medium and leave it alone. But experimentation is always worthwhile! Thanks Jen!
BTW, look for an artist profile of Jen coming up in early April
Great tutorial, cindi. I will try it. It is not easy to make a good transfer. Thank you for the explanation and great photos.
hugs
Vera
I went to sleep dreaming about this technique for my current project. Well this one and the others listed as well.lol Came home from shopping with my packing tape and can’t wait.
Thank you so much for your generosity in sharing your knowledge and experience with your readers…a whole new wonderful world…
Shirley
So glad you found all of these Shirley! I’m hoping that you’ll share some of your results with us
Tonight I tested to see if colored pencils or permanent markers (the Bic sharpie-equivalent) would work better for transfering a colored image. Colored pencils won by a landslide – some of the “permanent” markers started to dissolve into the water, and it all rubbed off.
Yeah, I’ve had issues with so-called “permanent” markers too, Tricia, especially when they’re mixed with polymer mediums. Thanks for sharing your experience with us!