Things you need:

Gel Medium, Paint brush, Straight Edge, Wood, Image on Paper, spray bottle full of water.

Hie thee to the craft store!

You’ll look in the paint section of your local Michael’s, Joann, or (please don’t) Hobby Lobby, and look for a thing called “Gel Medium”. About $12 a jar, grab a coupon off the store website for 40% off.

You’ll have your wood nice and clean – no paint or finish on it already. It should be sanded fairly smooth, and you can use a cloth or paper towel that’s been dampened to get the last bits of dust off.

Then, paint the whole thing with the gel medium. Not too thick. A brush or sponge is fine.

Lay the paper image-side down on the wood.

Use something with a straight-edge to smooth it out – I have one of those plastic things you scrape pans with, but you can also use a trowel or a credit card. Just get the bubbles out.

Let it dry.

After it’s completely dry, spray the paper with water. When it’s soaked, use your fingertips to rub away the paper, leaving only the image behind.

It takes a while. At the end you’ll probably end up sacrificing a washcloth to get the last gooey bits of paper pulp off the image.

Here are some pictures I transferred from a National Geographic magazine onto some parquet floor tiles using gel medium.

Thank you so much!! Does it matter what I print the image out on? Copier, laser or ink jet?

Will any Gel Medium work? Something like this

That’s the same one I have. The ink shouldn’t matter. Like I said: mine came from a magazine.

I used to do a lot of these with a wood burner/ soldering iron. Just trace the drawing with the hot tip of the soldering iron and you have an etched wood drawing worthy to hang anywhere.

@metadog

I hope that link was just for illustration purposes. 8oz. is a bit of overkill for your purpose.

Any craft store should carry Liquitex in much smaller sizes. It’s the. brand I most frequently used when doing face painting and even the smallest jar goes a very long way and will last you quite a long time.

Yes, that was just an example. The size didn’t mater, it was the contents.