The Fickle Hobbyist

Have you ever heard of water slide decal paper?  If you haven’t, let me introduce you to one of my favorite crafting products.  I picked mine up at Papilio.com last year when I first discovered this product.

It’s a tradition that I make ornaments for each of my cousins every year, so last year I was looking for something a little more “professional” looking than, say dough ornaments or something.  (which I actually still love)  My research led me to this product.

It’s essentially gelatin on top of paper.  You print an image onto the paper using your glossy setting, coat it a few times with a lacquer, and then you’re ready to add it to whatever surface you’d like.  This year I was making ornaments for the Brownie troop I am now a co-leader of.  I made sure to take a photo of each girl at our investiture ceremony so I would have something to work with.  I took these photos, put them into Photoshop where I used a feathering on the sides so that the color wouldn’t have an abrupt edge to it.  I also made a little thing that said “Oh My Honor…” with the troop number below.

After taking this photo, I took it to the garage and did about 3 or 4 coats of a clear, glossy lacquer.  Once it was dry, I was ready to transfer the photos to the ornaments.

Last year I used ornaments that looked like this:

These were great because they provided a smooth, flat surface to which I could apply the transfer easily.  The problem was that I ordered these online and this year I waited too long to get them, so I had to see what they had at Hobby Lobby.  This is what I found:

These were great, but they posed 2 problems.  The first one is that they were slightly convex.  I know this would probably cause a little bit of an issue with the transfer, but because the curve wasn’t TOO bad, I figured I could make it work.  The second thing is that they are clear.  When you print on the gelatin, it doesn’t actually print the white out, so anywhere there would be white in your photo, would actually be clear.  I thought to get around this problem, I could just fill the ornaments with something white and it would be fine.  Well, that didn’t actually work, but I’ll show you how I got around it.

When you’re ready to slide your transfer onto your craft surface, you’ll need some warm water.  Cut around your photo and dip it in the water.  You’ll want to give it a minute or two until the decal begins to slide around on the paper.

Then, put your decal up against the surface of your craft and gently slide it off, and directly onto your surface.  You’ll want to avoid getting bubbles underneath it, but if you do, don’t worry.  You can use the very paper you just slipped your decal from to ease the bubbles out.  You’ll feel that it’s still a little slippery, so fold your paper, slippery sides out, and use that to wipe the surface and smooth any air out.

From here, you can use a paper towel to dab the water off and let the ornaments dry.

At this point, you could be done if you wanted to be.  However, because you can *sort of* see the decal’s edges, I wanted something to smooth it out, so I went over the surface again with the lacquer.  I didn’t do this last year, though, so it’s up to you.

Now, if you look at the ornaments above, you’ll see what I mean about the color issue.  Without white behind it, the image is pretty difficult to see.  I noticed while the ornaments were sitting on top of something white, that the image was able to pop, plus I really liked the 3D effect of having the words above the picture.  So, instead of filling the ornament with something white and having two sides, I decided to grab some enamel paint and paint what would now become the back of the ornament.  (don’t mind the mess, this table has become craft headquarters)

So when they dried I was left with this:

I was really happy with how they turned out and I think the girls really liked them.

Now, if you are a visual learner and have to see how things are done, here is the video I taped LAST year before I even had a blog.  I just shot this for some of my friends to show them how it was done, so it’s not the best quality.  However, it walks you through the whole process.  Enjoy!

And here is the ornament that was seen in that video:

-Autumn

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