Hey, Everyone! I am so excited to show you a couple new skills I have recently acquired! After seeing quite a few posts on Pinterest, I decided to give these two a try! I saw some beautiful examples of how to transfer photo images onto wood and a blog about how to make your own wood stain using steel wool and vinegar. The results of the wood stain didn't turn out quite how I had wanted, but in Part 2, I will show you how I ended up getting it perfect! To combine the two new skills, I decided to stain some wood with the steel wool/vinegar mix and then added some Annie Sloan Old White Chalk Paint on top, then I transferred the images (some of my wedding photos) onto the wood.
To start, I took a mason jar and used 000 grade steel wool pulled apart with approximately two cups of white vinegar. I left it to sit for 24 hours, this is how it looked. Then, I used lukewarm water and some black tea (it must be black tea for it to work properly, the tannins in the tea bring out the wood stain). First, you want to just take the tea and brush it all over the wood and let it dry. Then, brush the steel wool/vinegar concoction and it will begin to stain the wood.
In the image above, this is how the wood looked after brushing the tea on it. It didn't change the wood colour, but as you can see below, after brushing the stain mix on, it changed very quickly!
As it turned out, I realized the stain was more of a rust/brown colour than the weathered gray colour I desired and had seen on the website. I later discovered that I wasn't using a strong enough tea. I ended up trying it again, but with Tetley Orange Pekoe caffeinated tea, and it turned out exactly how I had hoped! The results from my second try can be found in Part 2.
After the stain had dried, I brushed on some of the Annie Sloan Old White Chalk Paint and gave it a distressed look.
Now for the image transfer: To transfer an image onto wood, it must be printed onto regular white paper by a laser printer. I "flipped" the image so that it would turn out the right way when placed face down. This is especially crucial if you have any kind of words or numbers on the image, or else they will look backwards! Then I took some Artist's Loft gel medium in a gloss finish and brushed quite a good amount directly onto the image. Then, very carefully, I placed the image down and smoothed it out using an old gift card to get the air bubbles out. It is crucial to make sure it gets placed properly the first time, as it can ruin the image to lift it off the wood and try to move it.
After waiting overnight to ensure that all of the gel medium had dried, I placed a damp cloth over the image for about 2-3 minutes and then rubbed off the paper very gently until the image showed through and there were no more pieces of paper left.
In the image above, I have the Artist's Loft Gel Medium bottle to the left, and on the right is the Mod Podge used after the image is done to keep it sealed.
The results were amazing! This ended up being a very fun and beautiful project! After making a couple of changes, the wood stain worked out beautifully and the image transfer was fun and it was so exciting to see the images looking so professional and ready to be hung up!
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