Architecture of a Mom: February 2013

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Month in Review--February 2013

7:37:00 PM

Culinary Creativity

Crockpot Chili with Cocoa

8:38:00 PM

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I'm over at My Favorite Finds!

12:00:00 PM

Creative Outlets

St. Patrick's Day Vignette with Mod Podge Photo Transfers

5:00:00 AM

Did you know Mod Podge has a new product? It’s their photo transfer medium. This product lets you take a print or copy (from a dry toner printer or copier) of anything (photo, graphic, whatever) and put it on….just about anything. It works on fabric (light or dark), plastics, stone, metal, paint. Plaid was nice enough to send me some samples of this product and some other items from their line to try out! I have had a lot of fun experimenting with transferring images over the last couple of weeks, and now I am excited to share with all of ya’ll my cute little St. Patrick’s Day Vignette!

St. Patrick's Day Vignette with Mod Podge Photo Transfer

You see, around my house, we take St. Patrick’s Day very seriously! My husband’s family came from Ireland a long time ago…but he is very proud of his heritage. Not long after we got married, he and I went to Ireland for over a week, travelling the country. We totally fell in love with that place. But back in the day, we had a SLR camera…as in, not digital. So the majority of those photos are kept in a couple of scrapbooks, rarely brought out to the light of day.

So, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to create a vignette that made me think of our trip to Ireland. There are several photos in particular I completely love that was taken on and around Castle Blarney. Yes…that Castle Blarney. I have kissed it…and it only made me more eloquent in the written word, not the spoken one! Just kidding.

But here are the supplies I used for the vignette:

Some of the supplies from Plaid & a printout of one of the photos

Copies of photos and graphics (The pot o' gold graphic is my text and an image from Graphics Fairy here.)--reverse the print & print with a dry toner printer or copier)

Mod Podge Photo Transfer Medium

Various other types of Mod Podge (Gloss, Matte, and Glitter)

Podgeable Shapes (one large and a couple small shapes)

Podgeable Paper (fun thin paper perfect for podging!)

Mod Podge Rub-on Transfers

1 green bucket from the Target Dollar Spot

1 stone tile sample (white)

Green Craft Paint

Sponge brushes or Spouncers to apply paint and mod podge
Other accessories: ribbon, a candle, some "gold" from the kids' toys...and the leprechaun on the sheep is a souvenir from the old country!

This is the process I used for the transfer:

Apply the photo transfer medium to the front of the photo printout. You want to apply the medium in a pretty thick layer. You shouldn't be able to see the image under the medium.

Apply the print, photo medium side down, to the front surface to which you want to transfer. In this project I used acrylic (the podgeable shape shown here), stone, and metal. This process is also perfect for light and dark fabric…I have some other projects in the works for some cute clothes that I can't wait to show you!

Smooth the paper from the center outward, getting rid of bubbles. I just used my fingers for this. Then, the most important part of this step….walk away from this project. Leave it alone for at least 24 hours to dry…longer if it is humid where you are.

The day I applied the medium, it was beautiful and in the 60’s. The next day, there were flurries, and about the time the 24 hours were up, it was thundering and the snow was blowing sideways. So I decided to be safe and let the product dry for a little longer than 24 hours, just to be safe.

After you've waited at least 24 hours, take a sponge or rag and wet the entire back of the paper with water. It should be very wet. Let the paper sit for 2 minutes. Then take your sponge or rag and very gently rub the paper off the image. Keep rubbing, wetting the image as needed to remove all of the paper fibers. You may need to let the image dry a little and then re-wet so that you can see where those paper fibers are…they are hard to see when they are wet.

I put a coat of Mod Podge Gloss on top of my images to make them shiny, help the colors pop a little more, and to add some brush strokes to make the image look like a painting!

After I was done transferring the images, I wanted to dress up the vignette a little more with some podgeable shapes. For this one I used matte Mod Podge to apply some Podgeable Paper to the front with the transfer, and painted the back with some green acrylic paint. Once all that was dry, I coated the whole thing with gloss Mod Podge.

This image transfer is on a white stone tile. I used matte Mod Podge to apply some Podgeable Paper to the back of a small Podgeable shape, and then used some St. Patrick Day’s rub on transfers on the front.

On the bucket I used some glitter Mod Podge to add some sparkle after the photo transfer was complete.

I was really impressed with how well the images transferred to so many different materials. I have already had a couple people ask if the images were paintings! I also loved the versatility of the Podgeable papers and shapes. They were very simple to use and looked so professional when I was done.

If you're intrigued by this Photo Transfer Medium like I was, you should check out Plaid all over the web:
Like Plaid Crafts on Facebook

Follow Plaid Crafts on Twitter

Follow Plaid Crafts on Pinterest
Visit Paint Me Plaid

And check out some other lovely folks who are experimenting with this awesome photo transfer medium by Mod Podge:

This post was written as part of a campaign with The Blueprint Social. All opinions are my own.

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