Polymer medium transfer film technique
February 27, 2007 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Home & Living
Technique Tuesday!
There are so many ways to transfer images to your collages, altered books, and other mixed media projects. Every artist has favorites, and I thought that I would do a series of tutorials for you on the 7 methods that I like the best. I invite your input and comments during this short series: please share any additional tips that you can think of, your favorite products, your successes and failures. Or send me pictures of your work using transfers! I’d love to start including someone’s work besides my own.
Polymer medium transfer films are fun to use in your work. Since they need to dry overnight, it’s a method that you can’t use when you’re in a hurry. But it’s a great method for preparing batches of images to store for later use. Magazine images and fully saturated printouts work well, and the process will not reverse the image, so writing can be included. Store them between sheets of parchment, freezer, or waxed paper.
Thanks for sharing this technique! I think I’ll show this to my students, I’m trying to get them to be more creative and more colorful with their research workbooks (visual journals).
Great Michelle! I hope that they’ll try all the different techniques that will be coming up over the next few weeks
Cyndi, I use gloss gel medium for the same technique – though only 3 layers and it doesn’t have to dry overnight. I use a standard inkjet printer successfully which REALLY opens the doors on usable imagery. Another tip I can pass on, particulary with very coated papers or glossy magazine images, when that final layer of paper can be difficult to remove, try swiffer cloths – actually any synthetic soft fibre cloth – dipped in a bit of warm water. It easily takes off that coating. Don’t know why, but try it and see the magic!
Swiffer cloths? LOL Who’d'a thunk it? What a great tip, thanks! I don’t know why, but I just prefer the look that I get with the liquid medium over the gel. Personal preference I guess
Well, there is one more step that I do that may change your mind!
Once you’ve gel’d the transfer to your substrate (and yes, use gel medium – ink side down), let it dry, overnight preferable. The next day, you should be able to gently lift up a piece of the top layer of medium and actually peel the whole layer off, leaving just the ink on your surface. It really looks like you’ve printed your image on the surface. Very cool! 
Very very cool! OK eveyone…got that? Someone get busy and test this out with me!
Could you please explain to me what the “substrate” is before I try this technique!
Thanks Cyndi for sharing this information and also for your help.
Cheryl
Hi Cheryl,
The substrate is whatever paper or other surface (masonite, clay tile, etc) that you’ve chosen to place your image on. In my piece above, it was heavy watercolor paper. One of the neat things about polymer films and other transfers is that they are somewhat translucent (some methods more than others). So if you put them down on something that is already patterned or colored, it will show through to some extent.
Go for it Cheryl! These are an awful lot of fun
I’m going to try this technique! So far, other methods haven’t been successful for me.
Will this work if the original is an inkjet print?
Thank so much!
Shelley
Yup! I use inkjets all the time. Just handle it really gently to avoid stretching, and don’t be super-vigorous about removing every single little fiber of backing paper
Can you tell me or recommend any other types of mediums that can be used for this technique besides the Liquid polymer medium?
Thanks for sharing your knowledge & wonderful works of art!
Cindi
No, I’ve never used any other product for this, but you could experiment with white glues and other products. I also don’t see why gel medium wouldn’t work, but you’d have to apply really thin layers.
Thanks! I will be experimenting and see what will work. I appreciate your help : )
I’d love to see what you come up with!
I wish to try to transfer on the painted canvas from a drawing on Arches drawing paper.
Is this possible with the process you have shown above??
By the way this will be my first attempt at collage transfer
I really don’t know, Victor. It probably mostly depends upon what medium you’ve used for the drawing. If it’s graphite, I doubt this would work. What I would suggest is that you scan your drawing and print it out on a transparency, and then transfer it using this method:
http://www.layersuponlayers.com/fabric-image-transfers-t-shirt-transparencies/
Scroll down about halfway through the post to see the transparency method. Let me know how it works out for you! Best wishes with your project
This is a great tutorial. I have a question you may have already answered. Can you transfer photographs, from photopaper, glossy or matte? I have some photos I developed in the darkroom and I tried using a matte medium gel and it didnt work. What am I doing wrong, can this even be done.
Hi Marcos,
No, I don’t think you’re going to find that you can use acrylic gel to transfer a photo that’s chemically developed. With polaroids, you can soak them and actually lift off the image embedded in the emulsion…not sure that would work with regular photos though.
Personally, my favorite thing to do with not-so-great photos is to alter them. There’s a link HERE with some of my experiments. You can cut them into different shapes too…they don’t have to stay rectangular.
I tried this technique with polymer matte gel. I wanted to ask if I had done this correct since the image looks very light? Will it correct itself when I adhere it to the canvas? Or do I need to use a glossy gel. I think I goofed.
Matte gel is fine, Lillian. I doubt if you did it wrong…the film is very light, and you can make it look brighter/darker depending upon what you put under it. I used white under mine above. But there are plenty of times that I put in on a colored background and just let a ghost of the image show. That’s the beauty of this technique, it’s very ethereal looking!
Thank you
I am a newbie at this but so far so good, in addition I wanted to ask you if you recomend reversing the image since it has a smoother surface? The tuturial suggests that we use the ink side down? However the image is already textured with the polymer will the texture be even more saturated. Thanks again 
I always put it ink side down in order to protect the image. If you read through the comments, though, you’ll see that Jen does it that way, and then she actually is able to peel off the acrylic, leaving only the ink behind! If you want to try putting it down with the ink side up, there is no rule saying you can’t
Just be aware that the ink is the vulnerable part, and other things that you add on top could possibly end up smearing it.
Cyndi,
I am a new “artist” and am teaching myself through the internet. This web site is so great and I have learned a lot reading all the different techniques. I wanted to talk to you about a progect I need some help on and was wondering if you would be so kind to give me an email address to contact you. Thanks for all your inspiration.
sarah
Hi Sarah, I’m glad you’re finding the information helpful!
It would help me a lot if you would just write your questions here. Often times, the questions you have will help someone else in the future. I’ll be glad to help in any way I can
I want to make a photo collage for a wedding present. I’m waiting for them to send me some pics. I have a lot of neat stamps and scrap book paper to use in the collage. I am trying some of your image transfer techniques out. I printed a pic on glossy photo paper and used the polymer medium. However it came out stiff and flaked off a little bit. You could see the brush strokes also. And now I’m not sure how to apply it or if i even like it.
I was going to search for a few pices on the net that I like so I can give you an idea of where I’m headed. Thank you so much!
Here’s the thing that might help you to decide: most of these techniques are supposed to result in imperfect transfers. That’s the point…imperfect, flawed, even grungy images. Transparency and T-shirt transfers can be fairly perfect, but most of the paper methods are a lot less so.
Another exception to the “imperfect” rule is the Tilano transfer kit. I’m not sure if you’ve seen my entire list of transfer tutorials, but here’s the link:
http://www.blisstree.com/articles/image-transfer-methods-4-150/
I’ve been thinking about what is blocking me in this project. I think I have figured it out. I am a quilter so I am used to putting things together that are tangible. It’s not the transfer process that is holding me back. You have so many great methods. My problem is I don’t know what to do when I get the images on my canvas. I bought a baby set of acrylic paints but I don’t know how to paint! When I paint the canvas a soild it comes out looking like a 5 year old did it, so when I think about blending colors around the picture I just stop. I know you can’t teach someone to be an artist, just teach the techniques, so maybe this is over my head!
Of course it isn’t over your head, Sarah! You just need some ideas to get you going. Why don’t you check out some of the background painting techniques that I’ve got compiled…and try not to judge your own work so harshly. I know lots of VERY talented 5 year olds
I’m going to be reposting this list (updated) in a few days, but for now, here are some ideas to get to started. Even though I often use paper, you can do most of them on fabric too.
http://www.blisstree.com/articles/creating-backgrounds-for-artwork-150/
hi
cool techniques, im looking to transfer some of my drawings to perspex do you think that will work?? do you have any recomendations for that? what if i photocopy the drawings, can i transfer the photocopies to perspex?
sarina
Well, since perspex is an acrylic surface, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The polymer medium film technique in this tutorial may not work as well with toner copies as with fully saturated magazine images. You might want to look at the whole list of image transfer tutorials and consider a different method for that. For toner copies, I particularly like using clear silicone caulk.
http://www.mixed-media-artist.com/2009/04/image-transfer-methods.html