How to Make a Packing Tape Image Transfer

I've been having fun making these image transfers....so easy and so fast! I love art techniques that are fast...I'm not the most patient artist. The transfer above is layered over some of my handwriting, so you can see how the image is now transparent and your background will peek through. This technique works using photocopies, magazine images and text, newspapers...just about anything printed on paper. Just remember, those images are owned by whoever created them so keep that in mind when you are creating...use them in ways that don't violate anyone's copyrights. The best thing is that you can use your own artwork and photos and make photocopies, like I did in a journal page in a previous post. You know you own your own stuff, and can use it however you please!

My sister tried making some last night, so I took pictures to share with you:

You'll need some clear packing tape, a baking dish of water, a bone folder or spoon or something to burnish the image, scissors, and some magazines or photocopies to use for your transfers. Ink jet prints smear if you get them wet, so I think you need toner based copies.

Put the packing tape over your image...carefully...try to avoid wrinkles.

Cut out the tape covered image, cutting away any unwanted background.

Burnish the tape nice and tight to the image.

Then put your image in the pan of water to soak. Go work on taping up some more images, or eat some cookies...let it soak a bit so that the paper on the back gets nice and soft.

When the paper is soft, start rubbing the paper off the back. You will see that the inks are now on the tape, and you can just rub all the paper away.

Here she is part way done...keep rubbing until there's no paper left.

Your image will still be on the tape, and it will be transparent. You can glue it down with acrylic medium, attach it with brads, or whatever you dream up, and your background will show through.

Here are a few that we did last night. You can see on the bottom one that I had to use two pieces of tape to cover the image. That's ok, just overlap them a little so it all holds together.