Heart Transfer

Laser print transfer to glassine paper (the background is an old potato print) – both coincidentally use a heart motif.I’ve been working on collages recently utilising found paper, ink drawings and thread. A few years ago I had been working in a similar vein with laser-printed tracing paper incorporated into my collage. I decided to revisit this method, but this time I wanted to use glassine paper (that thin stuff between the pages of old-fashioned photo albums – you remember hard-copy albums, right?).

Glassine is too thin to go through a printer however, so alternative methods were called for. I also wanted something a little less hard-edged than a flat laser print. A transfer was the answer: a direct contact print onto a substrate. You can use many types of substrates, from art paper to fabric, wood, or metal, all with differing results.

Nail polish remover, a cotton swab, a spoon – and the great outdoors.After researching transfer techniques and realising I had none of the proper materials (and being impatient to start), I decided to experiment with other mediums. Transferring requires using a carbon-heavy photocopy (the primitive type found in public libraries rather than the posh laser printers in offices) for best results, but I decided to give the laser print a go anyway. The fresher the print is, the better.

I didn’t have any oil of wintergreen either (or methyl salicylate if you want to be a show-off), so I decided to try acetone – or good old nail polish remover, something every respectable girl artist has in her pencil case. All else you need is a cotton swab, a spoon, and good ventilation so you don’t get sick and die from inhaling all the deadly fumes.

Hey presto!I went out on the balcony armed with some ok quality illustration paper, my Sally Hanson nail polish remover, a Johnson & Johnson cotton tip, an old spoon left over from a photoshoot, and my fresh laser print of an old sketch of heart-bedecked trees. I placed the print upside down onto the paper and applied a little nail polish remover to the back. (The acetone will soak through the paper immediately, and become transparent.) Using the back of the spoon I burnished while the paper was still wet, which meant going bit by bit, as the print won’t transfer after the acetone dries.

It was like magic! The print was smudge-proof too. I immediately attempted a transfer onto the glassine – with poorer results unfortunately. The transfer was patchy, with lines that had bled a little, but perhaps in my excitement I was more careless with my burnishing. A friend has since kindly supplied me with some very pungent-smelling oil of wintergreen, so I’ll be playing with the real thing this weekend.

A transfer onto Canson 250gsm illustration paper was much more successful than those made using the glassine substrate.