Coloring Book Transfer

Hey Everyone! 
All you avid coloring book fans are in for a real surprise! 

The Ben Franklin stores in Hawai'i all sell these wonderful assorted sizes in smooth wood "canvases" that are multipurpose and ready to mount on the wall! You can deco page paper on them, transfer images, paint, wood burn, draw, stain, wrap, and glue decorative things to them!

I wanted to turn one into a "coloring page" that I could keep or give to a friend. 

Supplies:
1 Photocopy or online printout of a coloring page (keep in mind words will be backwards!)
Prisma colored pencils (the more colors the better!)
matte Mod Podge
brush
cup of water and paper towel

Optional Supplies:
Glossy Accents: for clear and 3 dimensional shine
Micron pen: for retracing any lines that became muddled by your pencil


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First take your matte Mod Podge and paint the surface of your wood panel with your brush. You don't need to apply a very thick coat as computer paper is thin, and you don't want to trap bubbles of Mod Podge unevenly underneath. Then ink side down,
place your coloring page on the wood panel. With your hands, smooth out any wrinkles or bubbles. Set this aside overnight.

Next, dip your fingers into the water cup, and somewhat saturate the coloring page with them. Rub the paper off with your fingers. Be sure not to let any fingernails or rings scratch the image. Just rub all of the paper off and your image will be on the wood underneath! As it dries, you might see certain parts turn white. That means there is still some paper left on the wood, so use water again and rub off the rest.

Once your wood image is completely dry, color away! Prisma colored pencils have the highest wax content of all the pencils so the pigment will go on nice and smooth and vibrant. They even color well over each other! Other cheaper pencils might not work quite as well because if they are "scratchy" with less pigment, the color might not get into the slight grain of the wood. 

If you can't invest in your Prisma colors yet, you can always use the Prisma blender pencil! It's basically a pencil with clear wax in the center. You can apply it afterwards to blend colors together and smooth them out, which helps diminish the "scratchy" pencil look.

Once you're finished coloring, you can seal everything with another layer of matte Mod Podge to keep everything clean and protected! 

Have fun with different kinds of images!

If you have an app that turns photographs into drawings, print those out and color them using this image transfer method! What a great gift idea!



Happy Coloring!

Bethany @ Enchanted Lake