Packing Tape Transfer

Hooray for no Tsunamis 0r technical difficulties! (We hope everyone is doing OK, by the way.) I can finally do my blog again, so as promised I'm going to show you how I did that neat little label on my altered box. The technique is very simple and all you need is some clear packing tape, an image to transfer, and a spray bottle filled with water.



Tape transfer works best with glossy magazine images but you can use almost anything including scrap booking paper or images printed with an ink jet or laser printer. For my image I used a Cartier ad out of a wedding magazine. First, you need to place the packing tape on the image. You're only working with about two inches of tape so choose your area carefully.









Next, I cut out the image to make it easier to work with and used a bone folder to burnish the tape to the image. Make sure to burnish the whole image and watch out for any air bubbles. If you end up with a crease in the tape the transfer will still work but you'll also be able to see the crease.

After your tape is nicely burnished, flip the image over and spray the back with water. Wait for a little while to let the water soak in, then gently rub the back of the image with your finger. This will start to take all the paper off of the tape while leaving the image on. When you've rubbed all the paper off the back, let the tape dry. Your image will end up being transparent with darker colors looking more opaque than lighter colors.

Here's my finished piece:

The rose at the bottom of the card is the image I transferred from the magazine ad, but I also used this technique to make the "thank you" wording at the top. I've found that this technique comes in handy for making personalized sentiments or for when you need another size for your wording, sort of like customizable rub-ons. It also works well for putting images to paper which may not be appropriate, or the right size, to send through the printer.

I hope everyone likes the idea, I've had a lot of fun playing around with it. I'm sure you'll see more of my upcoming projects using this technique, I seem to keep finding more and more applications for it.

Thanks for reading!

Puna @ Enchanted Lake