Just My o"PIN"ion on Tranferring Printer Text to Wood

I love anything vintage. The more distressed the better in my world. I am sooo lucky that my children also love the distressed look and have a way of making everything look vintage around here! Even though one of my favorite hobbies is to mosey around my favorite local antique stores, usually I walk away with little except for my creative juices flowing. You see, antiques are expensive. It seems like the antique look is very popular right now, so vendors have marked up their prices accordingly! So, I take ideas I see and try to recreate it in a more frugal way! I have been wanting to make a sign for my front porch that has our last name along with the year our recent home was established. I remember seeing this idea from Diddle Dumpling on Pinterest where you can transfer printer ink to wood.  So, I picked up a cute board for about $5.00 at the antique store and saved it for a moment I had time to work on this.

Diddle Dumpling has more detailed beginning instructions on how to prepare your board and the best paints to use, but I skipped this step since I bought my board ready to go!

Supplies:
*Wood Board that has been painted and distressed how you prefer.
*Printed Words, rotated so they are correct when you transfer them.  *Please google how to rotate your words according to your printer properties for the software you create the words in*  I used the Paint software that came with my laptop.
*Paint Brush
*Water
*Sharpie Pen
*Paint for touch ups.
*Hardware or twine to hang your sign.

Directions:
I created my words using the Paint software on my computer.  I must say this is what took the longest to figure out.  I probably tried a dozen times before I got the size I wanted.  However, I finally got it just right and was ready for the next step.  I placed my wording on the sign like I wanted and somewhat creased the paper to help it stay in place, but you could also tape it to help.  Then you take a paintbrush and go over the words with water.  You don't need to get it sopping wet, just wet is fine.  Then take the lid of your sharpie and press horizontal and vertical on the letters to get them to transfer over to the wood.  Like you would for any other transfer type material.  After you get it transferred you can go over the lettering with black paint if it is too light for you.  Then put hardware to hang on the back.

Verdict:
So everything went great as soon as I figured out how to print the wording the way I wanted.  It was a easy, simple process that was really quick.  However, when I took the paper off the wood, there was nothing on the wood.  The ink hadn't transferred over to the wood.  After doing some research, it seems laser jet printers won't work for this project unless you use acetone.  Soooo glad they put this in the directions...ugh!  So, I found my old ink jet printer, got it hooked up after installing the driver to my computer, dusted off the cobwebs and then realized there was no ink! So the only thing I have to say is...To Be Continued!

Here are some pictures of the experience!

Materials

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use Paintbrush To Get Printing Wet

Go Over Printed Letters With Sharpie Lid to Transfer

FAIL!