Acrylic Transfers

About acrylic transfers - if you want to try these at home and bring them ready to collage in wax, here is what you can do -

- your image has to have toner in it for this transfer process to work. Not every copy machine works well for this so you may want to take your image to various machines and get a copy from each machine. You can do the transfer process on all the images at the same time to see which machine works best.

- cut out your image leaving a scrap edge around it.

- tape it down, face up, to a smooth surface - plexiglas, glass, marble table

- day one: paint the surface completely with a thin coat of acrylic medium *

- day two: paint the surface completely with a thin coat of acrylic medium

- day three: same

- day four: repeat until you build up 6-8 layers

- at this point you will have an image on paper with built up layers of acrylic medium on top. Now comes the revelation of the transfer bit. I'll bring mine to class at this stage. We're going to free it from its surface, turn it over and rub off the paper backing. It the image has transferred from the paper to the acrylic we'll be left with a transparent transfer.

About acrylic medium - I'm using Golden GAC 100. Another one that works is Golden GAC 700. Also try acrylic gloss medium or any other acrylic media. We'll survey the various media and see what works best.

I use a disposable foam brush. I keep it in a baggie and tape the brush/baggie to the bottle of medium between uses. I don't wash it out between uses. It stays moist in its plastic bag.

Timing - you may paint faster than every 24 hours. Twice or even 3 times a day may be fine. For the sake of useful information, keep track of how many coats you apply.

Bring your transfers to class, done or in process, so we can all see.

Encaustic Painting - Poured and Painted

Hi everyone. Here is the latest crop of photos from the last two weeks. Below the photos are words about our next get together.

Alix - Blue


Alix - The Barrister


Alix - Bingo Ballet


Barbara - Our New House


Suzanne - Sou Prairie


Suzanne - Sur Prairie


Tessa - Not About the Dots


Loralei - Woodward 1


Loralei - Woodward 2


Loralei - Woodward 3


Loralei - Woodward 4


This Wednesday, 25 February we will try out some mixed media in wax. Bring your encaustic supplies and bits you may want to encase in some of your panels. You may start panels from scratch or continue on some you have already worked on. As far as the bits to bring, you can encase very fine things like feather boas, lacy bits or very heavy things like bolts. If you want to do heavy things be prepared to build up some wax on your panels first. Also, of course, photos, magazine pictures, newspaper - anything, really.

I will demonstrate pouring and painting wax over images adhered to panel again.

That's all I know for now.

Encaustic Painting - poured, painted wax on images

Hi everyone. Here are some of the images from last week. Below those are some words about this Thursday.

Alix - Floating Elements

Alix - St. Valentine

Alix - Circular

Tessa - Grey Study

Tessa - Dots on Snow

Loralei - Water and Oil

Alix - Tic, Tac . . .

Alix - Dorothy Unhinged

Loralei - Lifting from the Grid

Loralei - Enmeshed


This week we're going to paint wax on one of the paper images you've attached to panel and pour wax on the other. If you haven't attached paper to panel and want to, bring your panel and paper this week and we'll do it then. I'll bring my PVA. The painting wax on an image is fairly straight forward. We'll do that first while we wait for wax to melt.

About pouring, it will be easier to do if you have a vessel to heat the wax in that you can lift off your hot surface and pour from - say an old saucepan with a flat bottom. If you don't have something like that just bring your stuff and we'll sort it out.

See you Wednesday.