Book of Dreams: Week 3 {Images}

This was a week of too many techniques and too little time! When I decided on working with IMAGES for this weeks topic, I thought of all the transfer and manipulating techniques I had tried and looked at my trusty art books for inspiration. I started playing around with some of the techniques again and some for the first time and found myself overwhelmed with ideas (in a good way)! I will share several here and provide some links for others. I wanted to give you many ideas, so that if you don't have some of the supplies to do one technique, you can always try another. The goal is not to buy a bunch of new stuff, but to use what we have a try to create new things! So have fun:)

Transparencies
Let's start with transparencies. There are several techniques that you can do. You can print right onto transparencies with a regular ink jet printer. Just make sure you buy the kind that say "Ink Jet Printer Transparency Film." You can manipulate your photo all you want first. Then print out onto the transparency following the directions in the box. If you have words on your picture, make sure to print mirror image.

Using a brush, put a layer of gel medium onto the paper that you want to transfer your photo to. Then put your transparency with shiny side UP and the side that the ink was printed on, down onto your paper. Rub firmly with a credit card. Wait a couple of minutes (you can check on it by peeling it up a bit) and then carefully remove the transparency. Your photo will remain on the paper! I did that technique here, then decided I wanted more color, so I placed the transparency back onto the photo and it stuck, because it still had gel medium on it. I like how you can see the brush strokes through, so it now has a layered effect.

If you have a Xyron machine, you can put the transparency right through and then you can adhere the picture to anything you'd like. Here I attached it to a library card. Paper with writing on it looks neat, since you can see the writing through the picture. If you don't have a Xyron, you can use glue dots to adhere it to the paper.

Tissue paper
You can can print a picture onto tissue paper, by first adding a "carrier" onto the tissue so that it is thick enough to send through your printer. Spray a light coat of spray adhesive onto an 8.5x11" sheet of white copy paper. Carefully place a piece of tissue paper (here I used a dress pattern) onto the paper. Be very careful, the paper will be very sticky! Flatten out all the air pockets and wrinkles. Let it dry a few minutes. Put through your printer to print whatever photos you would like onto it. Let the ink dry for a minute or two. Then carefully peel off the tissue paper. This pattern paper was so thin that it ripped quite a bit, so I worked that into the design. Regular tissue paper should be a bit less fragile.

Fabric
Printing onto fabric is very similar to printing on tissue paper. To make a "carrier" for fabric to print onto, you use freezer paper. You cut a piece of freezer paper 8.5x11" and iron the shiny side of the freezer paper onto a piece of muslin fabric. This is a white or off white colored, thin, cotton fabric. You can then put the piece of fabric attached to the freezer paper into your printer and print your pictures onto it. Make sure it is fabric side up, so you are printing directly onto the fabric. You can also print words onto the paper. Whatever you'd like! You can then sew or glue your fabric picture to your page. *If you're afraid of jamming up your printer (this has not happened to me), you can always buy the t-shirt iron on transfer paper, print an image onto it and iron it onto muslin.

Vintage pictures~ "Instant ancestors"
These can be found at flea markets, estate sales or maybe in your own attic! They are very fun to use. Some people call them "rescused relatives" because people feel they've rescused these people from oblivion. They like to make up stories for these people with their art. I still need to add this little pixie to my altered book.

Manipulated pictures
One easy way to manipulate a picture is with fine grade sand paper. It will make scratch marks on the photo and will take off some of the color. If you want to add a color wash to the picture, you can then just paint over with watercolor paints. Karen Michel's book Altered Imagery has many fun ideas for manipulating photographs. Here I used my new letter stamps. Woops, the "s" are upside down. oh well:)

As I mentioned, there are many, many techniques you can use with your photos. Here is one good resource with many techniques to try. Here are a couple of more. One using packing tape and the other with gel medium. I know you all use photos in your art and your BOD already. I hope that this will provide some inspiration for you to try something new. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

I keep redefining my Book of Dreams. It seems to have evolved into the theme of Dreams of a Little Girl. I think I will continue to add quotes to many of my pages, probably long after this project is done:)