Collage 3: tape transfer

Last Sunday April taught us how to transfer ink to packing tape. You take an image that's on paper -- photo, newspaper, a magazine page -- & whoosh! do what April says, & it becomes one with the packing tape.

It's simple.

1. Find an image you like.

2. Tear it out or cut it out.

3. Cover the image with packing tape. Leave a little tape around the edges. If the image is big, cover it with two or more strips of tape. When you do this, make sure to overlap it. Don't put the tapes side by side. They have to be on top of each other (as in the photo here).

4. Put the whole thing in water. I used a plastic container for pineapple from Fresh Market.

5. Soak the image. In my notes I wrote 2 days, but it is more like 2 minutes. Or maybe 5 at most. You want to soak it long enough so the paper rolls right off. At first I didn't soak it long enough. I had to scrape the paper roughly. But with a little longer soak (sorry -- I didn't time it!) the back paper rolled right off. Experiment.

6. Take the image out & look at the back. The white stuff (paper!) on the back is not necessary anymore. Scrape it off with your fingernail. Gently.

7. You end up with tape that has your image on it-- a shiny, durable single-layer image. Stick it somewhere.

*If you use an image from a printer, make sure it's a laser. Ink-jet ink does not stick onto the tape. I used a printer at Staples, thinking all their printers must be laser. But when I scratched the back off, the front, colored side came off too. Back I went to Staples, & asked specifically for a laser print job. That one worked.

Experiment. I tried a color photo of sunflowers from the front page of an old Tallahassee Democrat. They turned out faint, not the vivid look I expected. But I like it. It's shiny. Like packing tape.

I taped photo transfers of favorite dogs to the covers of tiny Moleskin notebooks. Next, I think I'll applique tape transfers to fabric.