How to Transfer a Photo to Canvas

hi I'm Christy with Ben Franklin of Bonnie Lake and I am going to teach you how to make a canvas photo transfer to get started you'll need any photo and I used a cartoon photo just because that's what I wanted to do for the project cuz it's fun and it is printed on an inkjet printer with regular printer paper you will need any size canvas I like to use the wraparound canvases so that the image will transfer on all four sides and a gel medium we like to use Claudine helmouth here it's a high quality gel medium and it does a very nice smooth job and a paintbrush the first thing you need to do is completely coat your canvas with the gel medium and you need to get inside all of the dips in the canvas so that you'll have a complete photo transfer you want to try to make it smooth also so so that you don't have a lot of pressing on the picture if you press it too much you might get some tearing of the paper because it gets saturated so try to get every section of your canvas done there are two ways to do this you can paint the edges of it so all of your canvases have the same look from the side if you're doing multiple photos or you can of course wrap the canvas over the Ed I mean the picture over the edge so we're finishing up coating it completely with the gel medium trying to make it as smooth as possible so there aren't any bubbles between the canvas and your photo because a bubble will result in not a good transfer after you see that it's totally saturated and the whole surface is shiny that means everything has been coated you put your photo picture side down it's important because you're only going to be wanting the ink from the picture to stay and the paper will go away later centering is important right away because you cannot peel it off once you've pressed it down so make sure it's exactly like you want it wrapping the edges and obviously you can cut off the excess later but just leave it on for now and continue to press and press and press till you have no more wrinkles you notice on the back of the canvas that there's nothing here supporting it so you can put it on something that's approximately that big to help bring up the middle but it's not necessary so just continue to rub pushing with your thumbs to get all of the little bubbles out take your time cuz from here on it just has to dry so just stay with it till the bubbles are gone now that we have all of the bubbles worked out of it and it's pushed down on the edges like to fold it over like a present almost just to make sure that we have a good nice snug fit it's important that you're going to get glue on your hands try not to get glue on top of the paper or the AC the medium on top of the paper it makes it harder to peel off that spot at the end and then we let this sit for 24 hours so it can the ink can soak into the canvas so this is the one I did last night and it has been sitting it's completely dry and now we're ready to take off the paper and we will see the photo that's left so what you need is a damp sponge just to saturate your paper the gel medium is nice because it allows for you to get it wet without it destroying the image but as you dampen this you see how there are some white spots here you have to make sure you get all of those out the paper needs to be completely saturated for this process to work completely and properly but the neat thing about this canvas transfer is that it's not a intended to be a perfect transfer so if you have some of those white spots then it gives it a distressed fun look now that the paper is completely saturated I'm using this sponge to gently peel off the paper and I say gently because if you go over the same spot too many times or if you push too hard it will peel the image off but as you can see it's not that difficult to get the layer of paper off all right I've gotten most of the paper off but I'm going to stop right now because I want to show you what happens when you don't have your gel medium all the way on your canvas I obviously missed this spot right here when I was putting my my gel medium on there and here I stopped because with the sponge I was obviously pushing on the spot too hard and so I go back to using just my hand which can get a little bit more control with going to show you how the sides look really neat with the color totally on them and using a smaller canvas would allow you to to wrap it on all four sides but I finish with my hands and once it dries when you get it to this point where there's still just a little bit on there I like to stop because if you notice I'm rubbing and I am starting to rub more and more of the color off so I will let it dry for a while and come back and saturate it down again and rub a little more because once it's dry then you'll see the parts that are milky or hazy because they still have a little paper residue takes two or three times of letting let it dry and going back again but you don't have to let it dry overnight it's just letting it dry for an hour or so because you hadn't you don't soak it you just get it damp so it'll dry quickly and then you go back and just use your hand for the next passer pass by get all of the paper off you have a very special personalized piece of art when you finished you can leave it as is and hang it without any sealer because it's pretty safe to do that or as I've done with these photos photo transfer I put a gloss seal on top so that it's more protected it gives it a lot more of a professional type of look and it's a wonderful option to photo canvases because those are pretty expensive and this is just obviously the cost of a printed off piece of paper the gel medium and the C so again I'm christe at Ben Franklin of Bonnie Lake the class and event coordinator and if you'd like to come in and do this craft we can help you find all of the products necessary thanks

Channel: BFranklinCrafts

Views: 4,427,934

Keywords: Arts and Crafts, Photo Canvas, Photo Transfer, How To, Tutorial, DIY

Id: Lqg04pO-_9k

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 30 2012