How To Make Your Own Image Board?

Possible techniques to transfer design/image onto painted wood (decal, transfer via water/heat/rub, etc)?

• What are some possible (easiest and cost effective) ways to transfer an image to wood? The task is to duplicate the rather complicated hand-painted design on an old section of molding/custom ceiling to a new recreation of that at another location. The painted design on the sideboards is shadowed and intricate knot-work that would be complicated to stencil and would require several different applications or hand-painting and is too large an area to make this practical. Ideally, we would like to scan the image off the old board and be able to print the design onto some paper or even specially designed material that could be used to transfer it and all its colors onto the new wood (painted, but can be coated with some other necessary material to facilitate this) with as little trouble as possible. What are some techniques that might be able to use an inkjet printer (with rollers to feed through-thus no cardboard or non-bendable print surface) to print the design and then transfer? The image is symmetrical, so can be reversed without issue, but the re are some fine details that will need it to be resistant to bleeding or diffusing in the process of transfer - will need to keep lines and colors as true to the original as possible (although saturation can be increased in the original to compensate for fading if necessary. Creating a wallpaper-like decal is acceptable, so long as it will stick to wood. The most important is that it is able to be printed en masse and easy to apply as well, and then also it should be long lasting once applied, even if a clearcoat or topcoat must go on top of the image to fix it. I know of one method using elmers glue and modge podge but will have problems feeding glued paper into the printer due to the rollers.Is there any special paper that can be purchased for similar technique that can be feed through the inkjet printer to create the transferable image? Thanks in advance for any ideas!

• Answer:

  My method of using mod podge* or clear school glue goes on the already printed paper. 1. Print your design or designs onto paper. 2. Apply the mod podge* to the print. It takes 2 or 3 coats. Let dry. 3. Wet the side of the paper that does not have the mod podge* on it. When paper is slightly saturated, gently peel away the paper & this will leave the print adhered to the film of mod podge*. 4. Set aside & let dry. 5. Depending on the design, laying the dull side towards the wood, you can attach this to the wall by either using mod podge* or any clear poly-urethane. Be sure to squeegee all the air bubbles out. This is really important. Let this dry completely. 6. You can now seal your work with any clear acrylic sealer, including outdoor clear mod podge, clear acrylic brush on sealer. * I used the outdoor mod podge because of its durability.