Monday, August 14, 2006

packing-tape transfers

Update: Aug 18

I should have specified which sort of tape -- clear plastic packing tape.



Here is how to do a packing-tape transfer.

Stick your piece of packing tape on a magazine image (I believe that some other sorts of images work, too, but magazines are all I've tried).

Burnish well (I've been using a spoon). Any parts of the tape that don't touch the image (air bubbles?) will not transfer. This may not matter, or it may, in your final result, depending on what you want....

Soak in water. (I've been leaving them and walking away for an undetermined period of time.)

Rub soggy paper off the back with your thumbs, until all you feel is smoothness.

I've been doing the soaking and rubbing in a small plastic bucket. I've been peeling most of the back side of the paper off in more-or-less one piece, putting that in the recycle bag, then rubbing off the rest under the water in the bucket, and flushing the contents of the bucket when I'm done with all the transfers in that batch.

If you have several layers of paper on one piece of tape, you may need to rub one off and then leave the next to soak....

And that's all there is.

If you have rubbed it down to the clear tape, it's still sticky in those spots, but I haven't had enough of those to feel confident that it would stick by itself, so I've been gluing it down. I wonder about longevity......

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

on Monday August 14, you wrote about packing tape transfers...but I still don't get the final step (after stuff is rubbed off the back)...what happens next???? Love your images, too...

I need orange said...

After the paper is rubbed off the back, you let it dry and then attach it to ... whatever. I used glue, on my chimp and penguin, to stick the finished transfer to cardstock.