For my dear friend who turned 27 last week, I made some handmade presents. One of them was a picture transfer on wood. It looks basically as if a picture was printed on the wood, instead of on paper. I just love the wooden veins that you can see in the picture.

I bought a nice pice of wood in the workshop at school for 20 cents. I bought acrylic varnish (matt) in Action.

I found this nice tutorial in Dutch which you can find under this link. For the English speaking people I also added a tutorial video in English ;).

So this is how I did it:

1. Print a nice photo of you and your friend MIRRORED with laser printer. You can also do it with inkjet. You can try out both colour or black and white, but I would prefer the last one.

2. Ask your housemate a piece of sandpaper and sand down the whole surface of the wood where you want to put the picture on.

3. Smear a layer of acrylic varnish or gel medium on the wooden surface.

4. Place the picture with a fitting size on the layer of varnish or gel, with the printed side facing down. It is important that you stick it very carefully in all parts on the wood and that there are no air bubbles left.

5. Let is dry for at least one night. The longer you wait, the better, as with a lot of other things in life ;).

6. Take a little cup of room temperature water and dump it carefully of the paper so that it starts peeling off. Be very careful with the removing of the white paper, though it is normal that some ink of the picture will come off again as well. But this makes a super nice effect!

7. Once you removed all the paper, let it dry for an hour. Then smear another layer or two of the varnish on it, so that your pictures shines bright like a diamond.

8. Put in a nice gift wrap and hand over to your friend who will be happy as hel.