With the first and second tries, after the clay cooled, I let the paper soak in water for about 10 minutes, and then worked on scrubbing the paper away. NOT fun. And not practical for doing lots of pieces. And took the ink off with the paper.
On the third try, with the Avery transfer paper, I dunked the papers in ice water immediately after removing from the oven. But I only let them sit for about a minute. I wanted them to cool quickly but did not want the paper dissolving into a mess that would be hard to remove. So after a quick dunk, I peeled the paper right off - no scrubbing and great color transfer. Hooray!
 | Regular "multi-purpose" copy paper. Set with heat gun. Soaked & all paper scrubbed off. Only a little black ink remains. :( |
 | Regular "multi-purpose" copy paper. Oven baked for ? minutes at ? temp. Some color because the paper was not scrubbed completely off. Nice & glossy surface. And bubbles. :( |
 | Avery paper #3271 "Light Fabric Tranfers" for Inkjets Baked 10 minutes at 275. Paper was very easy to peel off. Excellent ink transfer. :) |
 | All of the third batch where I used the Avery paper. 19 of 20 came out great. Can you spot the one that didn't? |
The Avery transfer paper, I bought it at Walmart. Came in a pack of six 8.5 x 11 sheets for $12. At $2 a sheet, I didn't want to waste paper, so the hardest and most time-consuming part for me was trying to fill a sheet with multiple images, at the sizes I wanted them. I must have 30 different image-type programs on my computer but none of them seem suitable for this task. So after one test sheet I ended up putting the actual transfer sheet through the printer 4 times at different positions, to try to fill all of it. Gott'a be a better way.
Anyhow, that aside, I think this transfer method was pretty fast and simple. My next step now is to actually apply these transfers to cured pieces. That step scares me as I'm not sure of the proper baking time or temp to get them crystal clear without burning them. So uhm, suggestions/advice welcome ... ;)
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6 comments:
I have had a lot of luck with this technique, I think I got it from glassattic.com
After curing if the kato liquid looks cloudy, zap it with a heat gun. Don't get too close and keep the gun moving around to prevent burning. Clears it right up.
So, any image you can get into your hard drive can be transfered to clay ? Good clear image in, good clear image out ? Take a picture of my dog (if I had one) transfer it to a flat circular piece of clay, bake it, glue some felt to the underside . . . Voi La, personalized coasters ? Sold at a premium ?
Thanks for the tip, Colt! I wouldn't have thought to try the heat gun _after_ baking.
Download Photoscape - it's free and I've been using it to put multiple images onto my transfer paper. It's a really useful program, with it and Picasa I'm set.
Love the photos, it looks like you're having a lot of fun. Like Star said, try the heat gun, be careful with it, but it will clear the transfers beautifully. I usually do it after I bring them out of the oven so they're already hot - quicker that way.
Hi Teresa,
I love Photoscape for making easy animated images! I have never tried it for printing though - will absolutely check its options out for that, thanks!
>>I usually do it after I bring them out of the oven so they're already hot - quicker that way. <<
I tried that on two pieces and quickly burned them right up. I think they were so hot already from the oven that the temp of the base clay got too hot before the liquid clay cleared up? Maybe. I dunn'o. I'm obviously still learning the ropes on this but I did better with it after I let them cool thoroughly.
Thanks for your comments!
Teresa,
I tried twice to add your blog to the list over there ---> of blogs I follow, but it's not showing up. Maybe it just takes some time for it to show up. I'll try again if it doesn't appear soon.
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