We transfer the photo to the tree. We make a wonderful gift with our own hands. Transferring the image to wood Transferring the printed image to wood

With a minimum amount of material and time spent, you can make a memorable gift or retro-style decoration for your interior with your own hands. The tree will give the photo a special inner glow, and you will also get beautiful matte shades in the transferred frame. This is a step-by-step illustrated master class on creating real works of art with your own hands.

You learn:
— Select color images to transfer to wood;
— Work with gel medium (gel medium transfer - transfer gel, gel for transferring images; freely sold on the RuNet);
— Transfer any image to the surface;
— Competently complete the work of transferring the image to the surface.

1. Select the ones that suit you starting materials .

The wooden base can be of any shape, but its surface must be perfectly smooth so that the image lies flat and without breaks in every sense. It is also preferable to use light wood, since it is this that gives that “inner glow”. A particularly light base is important for portraits so that the skin tone does not change for the worse.

As for the photograph, it must be printed on a laser printer and from the very beginning in a size equal to the size of the wooden base for transfer. Therefore, after printing, it is good to trim off the excess white paper from the frame to make it easier to work with later. The picture should normally be high-contrast (you can process the image in a graphics editor on your PC if this is not the case). But pictures that are slightly out of focus and with very soft shades of color give an excellent retro effect on wood. For examples of suitable shots, see below - from bottom to top and from right to left: a contrast shot, but out of focus; the photo is out of focus and has soft tones; contrast shot in perfect focus. Wood will enhance color rendering in any case.

Any transfer medium gel can be used, but the best image is produced by a gel with a matte effect (marked “matt” on the package) and the most dense/thick consistency (marked “heavy” on the package).

Also to you will come in handy:
- unnecessary plastic roller,
- (or) a wide wooden stick (purchased at a pharmacy),
- a pair of medium-sized flat brushes for applying the composition (glue brushes),
- soft sponge or dish sponge (new),
- water in a small bowl or low glass,
- paper towels/napkins/handkerchiefs/toilet paper or thin kitchen towels,
- a small amount of oil (any liquid from the kitchen).

2. Right before you begin, wipe your wood base several times with a clean, dry towel to remove any crumbs or dust.

3. Apply a good layer of transfer gel to the surface of the wood: definitely not thin (a lot of wood shouldn’t be visible through the gel), but not very thick (the gel layer shouldn’t look like impenetrable icing on a cake either). Just squeeze the gel out of the tube or spoon the gel out of the container onto the wood, and then spread it in a more or less even layer with a brush (or wooden stick, or a plastic card - whichever is more convenient for you). Don't forget to make sure that the layer on the edges of the wooden base is no thinner than in the middle.

4. While the gel is still wet, place the print side down on the gel. The photo can be cropped to a size slightly smaller (or much smaller) than the wooden base, then you will end up with a thin or wide wooden frame around the image. Using your fingers carefully (so as not to move the photograph even a millimeter, hold it with one hand and gently smooth it in all directions with the other), smooth out the superimposed photograph, slightly pressing it to the surface and removing air between the photograph and the gel on the wood. It is important not to press so hard that the gel begins to squeeze out on the sides!

5. Smooth it with your fingers, take a plastic card (it’s more convenient to use than a stick, since the first edge gives more uniform pressure) and, again holding the photo with one hand, continue to smooth the white surface of the photo with the second edge of the card.

6. After this, set your workpiece aside until the gel dries COMPLETELY overnight. Resist the temptation to hold up the photo and see what happens: you will probably ruin the work. If you work in the summer, you can also put the workpiece in the sun for a couple of hours (but not on the radiator!!) and then check the degree of drying, and this may(!) be enough.

7. After the gel has COMPLETELY dried, take a sponge, dampen its edge a little in water (do not saturate it with water, just wet it) and start applying water directly to the back white surface of the photo on the tree. Do this carefully in several passes (wetting the sponge several times), first blotting the image with a sponge, and then, when there is already a lot of water on the paper, continuing to move in gentle circular movements. That is why - so that the material does not immediately begin to rub off in pellets of water - you must initially print the photo on special photo paper, and not on ordinary office paper. Make sure you are working with the soft part of the sponge and not the hard scrubbing layer. During this process, when squeezing the sponge into the glass, a whitish liquid will flow, and this is normal. The paper should be completely wet from the center to the edges without gaps.

8. Next, still continuing to wet the sponge from time to time, begin to roll away the wet paper from the image. Make sure to not only work in one central area, but equally around the edges so that the paper doesn't rub off in one area because you may start to remove your transferred image. Don’t be especially afraid of this, rub with light pressure, and the paper will come off quickly, the main thing is not to rub one place with force, as if you were scrubbing a stain; in particular, do not rub those places where the paper is no longer there.

The paper should come off completely this way. If some areas do not want to be rubbed off, use your own moistened fingers, as they are smoother and you can feel the pressure and progress better with them.

Run the sponge over the picture without pressing to remove all the pellets down to the smallest ones, and then without pressing with wet fingers over the same surface to make sure by the texture that there is no more paper left, not even a thin layer.

Wipe the image with a clean, thin towel to remove paper “dust” and any remaining moisture.

At the end of this stage, wet your fingers again and walk again several times, but almost without any pressure, over the image, since the paper hairs probably still remain: while the paper is wet, it is not visible, but when it dries, it will become very noticeable if it remains in the image.

9. Dry the picture on the wood again with a thin towel. Set aside the tree with the image until it is completely dry from moisture.

10. As you can see in the picture below, even if you rubbed very carefully, after drying, some of the paper fibers will still “show up” in the image. You can use water again and then dry the picture again. But here's another one, more efficient technique completion of work.

With one finger, literally take a couple of drops of oil and carefully apply it to the picture in a circular motion. And as you work, you will see how these fibers simply disappear. Once you have achieved the desired result, take a thin towel (paper or fabric) and start wiping the oil from the picture with the tip.

11. If during work a small amount of gel spills over the edges of the image on a wooden base, just carefully remove the frozen lumps of gel with your fingers.

12. By and large, the work is finished. But now you can decorate the frame, for example, using a special ornamental adhesive tape with a pattern - washi-tape (freely sold on the RuNet). Here the frame is presented in the form of an abstraction, repeating and shading the colors of the image. It is also convenient for sealing the side edges of a wooden base. You can also use acrylic paint instead of ribbons. It is also worth painting the back side of the tree with one color.

Probably, in every house where attention is paid to the interior, there are paintings or their modern analogue - photographs. Even most offices and offices have works of art. Most often, these are amateur works that depict a landscape, and such design of the room will not surprise anyone. Today I want to invite you to consider interesting works artist, thanks to whom you can add a fresh touch to your interior.

Thanks to today's master class, you will learn how to transfer an image from a photograph to a board. The author offers us urban scenes from the beginning of the last century, but you can use this method of image transfer for any photographs.

Such works look great among modern surroundings.

For work we will need:
- board;
- photo;
- laser printer;
- fine sandpaper;
- PVA glue;
- acrylic lacquer;
- sponge;
- warm water;
- acrylic paint.

The photo below shows a step-by-step and accessible way for everyone to transfer any image to wooden surface.
1. Increase to the right size the selected photo, and then print it on a laser printer so that the reverse image is obtained.
2. Sand the board on which the image will be with fine sand. sandpaper or, if possible, sand with a machine (the surface of the board should be smooth).
3. Cover the surface of the board with PVA glue (using it gives the most good result) or acrylic varnish.
4. Carefully place our printout with the image down, smooth the surface with a sponge, expelling air bubbles and trying not to make folds (the procedure is similar to gluing wallpaper).
5. Leave the image to dry (it will take about 12 hours).
6. Using warm water and a sponge, carefully remove the paper from the board. If the paper cannot be removed with a sponge, you can roll it up with your fingers - the design will not be damaged. We remove absolutely all paper from the image.
7. When the image is dry from moisture, cover it with acrylic varnish.
8. Wait for the varnish to dry.
9. The image can be left as it is, or it can be aged using acrylic paint. You can stamp the image different colors- in this case, one color is superimposed on another. To prevent colors from mixing, intermediate drying is necessary. The protruding parts of the image are carefully processed with fine sandpaper.

As you can see, this method of transferring an image onto a wooden surface is simple and accessible to anyone who wants to create a unique and original work of art. Thanks to imagination and the use of acrylic paints, you can create not only a series of urban scenes and portraits in a retro style, but also interesting still lifes. Such an image can be not only a wonderful decoration for your home, but also an extraordinary gift to friends and relatives on the occasion of a special event. Try it, you will definitely succeed!

All photos from the article

Distinctive feature century high technology is the ease with which beauty is replicated and originality is put on stream. But if not everyone is given the gift of becoming an artist and painting great canvases, then creating unique images with the help simple technologies many can do.

Wood is one of the suitable materials, on which a photograph or favorite drawing will look great. In addition to the fact that the quality of the product will remain unchanged for many years, it will be a kind of masterpiece or a piece of goods, depending on how it is disposed of.

The essence of technology

Don't let people like that scare you Clever words, like sublimation printing technology or graverton, because they are one and the same, therefore, less incomprehensible. The technology is based on the principle of sublimation, when a substance is exposed to high temperature“jumps” from a gaseous state directly to a solid state, bypassing the wet stage.

Graverton technology allows you to transfer a design to wood, metal, glass, fabric, and the process itself takes place in a certain order:

The image is printed on sublimation paper;
The front side is applied to the object being processed;
Placed in a heat press for a certain time.

Can be subjected to artistic treatment great amount things - from shoes, dishes, fabrics to corporate symbols, puzzles and all sorts of other unexpected things.

The main disadvantage of graverton technology is the need for special equipment and its high price:

sublimation printer(starting from 500 thousand rubles and kopecks);
thermal transfer press(from 9 to 30 thousand rubles).

Have you ever thought about “printing” your photographs on wood or has such a thought even occurred to you? One way or another, if you like the effect described, you can easily do it yourself by following simple steps described below.

Step 1 - What is required?

Below is a list of items needed for the job. You do not have to use identical tools, except as noted below.

Photo printed on a laser printer

Wooden board the same size as the photo

Gel medium (it must be acrylic)

Brush for applying gel medium

A butter knife or other flat tool to smooth the photo onto the wood

Wood paint (optional) and rags

Soft paraffin or matte ModPodge decoupage glue to smooth and cover the image

Paraffin brush

Picture hanging brackets

Step 2 – Selecting an image and its future appearance

Obviously, you first need to decide what exactly you want to transfer to the tree. Most often, bright, clear photographs from high resolution won't look too stylish on the tree. In our case, this photograph of an airplane was processed in Lightroom to give it a vintage look - converted to monochrome, contrast was increased and film grain was added.

Step 3 – Print the Photo and Find the Wood Base

Very IMPORTANT - the image must be laser printed, if this is not the case, you don’t even have to try to do the rest. Then you need to find a suitable wooden base, smooth and of the appropriate size.

Step 4 – Applying the gel medium to the wood

This is extremely important point. Cover the entire surface of the wood with one layer of gel medium, not too thin, but not too greasy. If the layer turns out to be too thick and dense, it will be difficult to remove the image after the procedure. A layer that is too thin will most likely not allow the image to transfer to the wood in some places. Try to create an even, high-quality layer.

After the gel medium is applied, you need to place the front part of the photo on the tree. There will definitely be bubbles in the photo, so do your best to reduce and smooth them out. In our situation it was used plastic tool, which came to hand, but it could be a butter knife, a ruler, a roller, or any other item that you think would be suitable for this purpose.

After the image is placed on the base and smoothed, leave it overnight and don’t let anyone get close!

Step 5 – Remove the Paper

This is a very interesting stage. To remove the paper, we only need to wet it and scrub it with our hands. This is a rather messy process and there may be another way, but we found fingers to be the most suitable tool. Some parts of the image will be easier to remove than others, but keep in mind that by the end of the procedure your hands and fingers will definitely be tired. The procedure may have to be repeated and in total it will take from up to 30 minutes. But this extremely exciting moment is to see how the photograph appears on the tree. Have your vacuum cleaner ready to clean up the mess you're sure to get from this step.

Step 6 – Finishing Touches

At this stage you can show your creativity. Since we were going for a vintage look, we gave it one coat of wood paint. Be careful not to let the work become too dark or take on an undesirable color. After application, you can soak the surface with a rag to remove excess.

We then lightly sanded the edges to remove any excess gel and smooth out the wood surface. We also used a product called Pigment and sponged it onto the edges to create a vignetting-like effect.

1. Select suitable source materials.

2. Right before you begin, wipe your wood base several times with a clean, dry towel to remove any crumbs or dust.

3. Apply a good layer of transfer gel to the surface of the wood: definitely not thin (a lot of wood shouldn’t be visible through the gel), but not very thick (the gel layer shouldn’t look like impenetrable icing on a cake either). Just squeeze the gel out of the tube or transfer it with a spoon from the container onto the wood, and then spread it in a more or less even layer with a brush (or a wooden stick, or a plastic card - whichever is more convenient for you). Don't forget to make sure that the layer on the edges of the wooden base is no thinner than in the middle.

Wipe the image with a clean, thin towel to remove paper “dust” and any remaining moisture.

9. Dry the picture on the wood again with a thin towel. Set aside the tree with the image until it is completely dry from moisture.

11. If during work a small amount of gel spills over the edges of the image on a wooden base, just carefully remove the frozen lumps of gel with your fingers.