Magic Transfer Paper from Polymer Clay TV

I must say a huge thanks to Ilysa and Kira for sending some of their Magic Transfer Paper to me so I could have a play around.  Okay so my thing is beads!  I love images transferred to beads...not sure why, I just do, which is why I was really keen to try this transfer paper to see how it compares to the other transfer techniques I've tried.  Let's have a look and see how it worked.  Thanks to my gorgeous friend Rachel for helping out with the printing.  Rachel has created some flat pieces and I created a bead.  Let's have a look at the results.  

http://polymerclaytv.indiemade.com/catalog/magic-transfer-paper

Here is the link to purchase the Magic Transfer Paper

Rachel is getting our images ready for printing.  They must be printed using a laser copier.

Add one page at a time into the printer.

Voila!  Out come our images.  I decided to do some family pieces so I emailed through some of my pics to Rachel.  Rachel decided to create some custom brooches using some of her totally funky images. 

Cut out your images.  We decided to transfer to white clay.

Pop your paper onto the clay, image side down and burnish for a bit.
 ** See notes at the end of this post about the length of time needed to "set" the image.

Wash the paper off in water.  We tried a couple of different ways...water running directly onto the image and near the image so the water flows over it as in the pic above.  The latter worked much better for us.

We had to rub the image very gently the remove all the paper.  Basically the paper pretty much dissolves in the water and leaves the image on the clay.  No difference in colour either.

Hmmmmm nice transfers.

Nice colours!! yay!!

Rachel then cut around the images with a craft knife.

She then backed them onto some conditioned black clay and cut around the edges.  (She could have done this in one step but I didn't mention that!! haha).  She did a great job.

The image looks a little "milky" or "furry".  I think we may have left a teeny bit of the paper on.  We decided not to worry because we were going to coat with liquid clay anyway.

Bake following the manufacturers recommendations. 

Rachel then coated with a layer of liquid clay and cured with the heat gun.

Totally love them!!!

Rachel turned her pieces into brooches and they are so very awesome.

I decided to create a bead with and image of my gorgeous son Cooper (who has just moved to Brisbane - accross the other side of the country from me!!!).  This would now test the paper, ink and image as it needs some manipulating.  You'll notice Rachel didn't need to touch her image at all as they pretty much sat flat on her tile the whole time.

I cut out the image and placed it onto my clay (remember image side down).  

I burnished and then left for a couple of hours then washed the paper off.  Notice how the ink has smudged slightly in the top left corner - I added some powder to my image to stop this as I manipulated the clay to create the bead.  The image turned out beautifully.  The paper washed off completed with almost no residue.  Perfect!!

This is my finished bead and I just love it.  It will become part of a piece I'm creating with all my family on it.  

**  An important note we discovered while using this paper.   In the pic below the image on the right is of my new great nephew Gage (he is just so gorgeous).  This was burnished onto the clay and then washed off straight away.  Parts of the image washed away as well as I possibly didn't give it time to soak into the clay properly.  The end result was quite messy.  This was, in actual fact, my very first try.  The image on the left is my mum and dad and I left the paper sitting on the clay for much longer, probably 10 minutes...it turned out much nicer.  This was my second try.  The image of Cooper (above) turned out even better...the paper here was left on for a couple of hours.  So I would conclude that it's probably best to leave your paper sitting on the clay for at least an hour and then wash off.  It gives a much nicer result in my opinion.