I got this crazy idea to make a North Pole Shipping Crate for Christmas morning, and it sent me into a deep dive to learn how to transfer images onto wood.
I wanted our Christmas Box to be made of wood (my husband does wood working, so he helped me make one from a pallet we had sitting around) and I knew I wanted it to look like it had been ‘stamped’ with shipping info as it left the north pole.
At first the plan was to use a vinyl stencil and paint on the letters. But then I found these beautiful vintage Christmas prints and I fell in love with the detail on them. I wanted more than what a stencil could do, so I did some digging. I found a method of transfering laser ink prints onto wood using water based polyurethene. Some test runs proved it worked and I was ready to go!
Overall, this project wasn’t very time consuming, and I feel like it came out with fantastic results. I can not wait to try it out on Christmas morning.
If you’d like to learn how to transfer images onto wood, here’s what I did…
Getting the Prints
We have a laser printer at home, which I used for the test runs and it worked great. But I wanted to do a few prints at a larger size (11×17) so I sent all the files to Fedex/Kinkos for printing. A print shop like that has better quality printers than I will ever be able to afford, and while my home printer worked fine, the rich color on these was amazing.
When you transfer your images onto wood, it will come out as the mirror image of the prints. So make sure all your text and important objects are printed in reverse.
Play the clip below to see this step of the process.
Transfer Images
Once I had the images, the transfer process was pretty simple. I started by painting a coat of water based Poly (I used this) and then placing the image, ink side down, onto the wet surface.
Play the clip below to see this step of the process.
Removing Paper
Removing the paper definitely took the most time. I started with a toothbrush, but eventually found that Magic Erasers were the perfect tool.
Play the clip below to see this step of the process.
Adding a Top Coat
Once the paper was off, I added a few more coats of poly so that the images would be protected and that was that.
Play the clip below to see this step of the process.
Completed Box
I loved the way this turned out and can’t wait to use it on Christmas morning!
Play the clip below to see the completed box.