Make It! : Wood Photo Portrait

As promised, it's DIY Week! Following my Handmade Holidays links, I wanted to do a little show-and-tell with some of my own projects that will hopefully act as further inspiration for your holiday gifting. Each of the DIY's I'm going to show you took relatively little time to complete-- no more than a couple hours at most-- and don't typically require any special equipment or supplies. Some of them I created myself, and some were based off of other tutorials I've seen online {which I will do my best to link to, of course}.



First up is a portrait on wood using a transfer technique. This would be a beautiful gift to loved ones who might enjoy a unique spin on a traditional portrait. I think this would also be a very interesting way to experiment with mixed media artwork if you were to scan and print some of your own artwork and transfer the image in the same way. I might have to experiment with transferring artwork either under or on top of other collage elements adhered to wood or canvas.

 
Supplies: Wood panel, laser printed photo, gel matte medium, water, sponge or Magic Eraser, and Mod Podge

Time: Approximately 2 hours, not including initial overnight drying time

I used this video as my tutorial:



I followed the same process but I have quite a few tips for anyone trying out this project for themselves:
- Using a photo with good contrast is important so that you get definition between the details. However, really light or white tones are tricky because once you rub off the paper, white areas become challenging because you have to make sure you remove all the paper down to the bare wood.
- Use a laser printer or a photocopy. Inkjet printers don't work for this.
- If your wood is larger than what you can print on one sheet of paper (ex. my wood was 9x9" and therefore bigger than my printer paper) you can print the photo onto two separate sheets (this is called "tiled printing") and carefully trim the pieces so they align, and take care when pasting them to the wood. It won't look perfect-- you can see a little seam running down the right side of the second photo-- but it still works well.
- If you have text on your image, or want your image to appear exactly as it does in the photo/on screen, you need to flip the image before printing because everything is reversed once you transfer.
- Definitely let the print dry overnight once it's adhered to the wood.
- When removing the paper, be gentle so you don't rub off the ink layer. I had a few spots that messed up because there was lousy contact between the photo and the gel matte medium while the print was drying; make sure you get a really thick layer of gel medium before laying the photo down and press out any bubbles. If you have a large bubble when you lay down the photo, pricking the paper lightly with a pin can help smooth out the spot.
- I had to do several rounds of wetting and removing the paper because once the image started to dry, the white paper pulp remaining on the image made it look very fuzzy/cloudy. Once I got the majority of the paper removed, I used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (those things truly are magic) and lightly rubbed the surface to remove most of the leftover cloudy paper pulp.
- If your wood warps during the wetting process, don't panic. My wood was buckled for a day or two and then it slowly flattened back to normal once it dried out. I might try and use a thicker piece of wood next time, however.

Similar Techniques:
- Canvas Portrait from A Beautiful Mess

There you have it! I like how mine turned out, but I definitely want to try this technique again with a different photo to see if it works better. Fun fact about me: What you see here is the very first wedding photo I've printed and done anything with. I can't believe we've been married over three years and I didn't have a single wedding photo printed until now, for shame.