How to Transfer a Simple Picture onto Wood

Do you love to create crafts out of wood? Putting a simple graphic onto wood is not very difficult, and it doesn't have to involve carbon paper. However, you will need to purchase a woodburning pen. The kind that I use is green and is available at Wal Mart for about $10. As far as which tip to use, select one that will allow you to burn a simple dot. You would be very surprised how effective dots can be in forming a picture on wood!

Where can you find simple graphics? There are beautiful ones in iron-on pattern books. Clipart websites are also excellent places to find them. Coloring books can be a good place to find simple graphics. Once a graphic is decided upon, photocopy it and enlarge it if necessary. You'll need to find a graphic simple enough so that the lines aren't very close together. Keep the piece of paper with the graphic on it. You'll need it.

Obtain a nice, flat piece of wood to put your graphic on. Wal Mart has ready-made plaques that are relatively inexpensive, for you to practice on. If you happen to have a woodshop available, you might try the kind of wood that I like to use: a one-inch thick piece of cedar that's 10 inches wide and 12 inches long. Whatever piece of material you decide to use, make sure that it's sanded and flat.

Next, use clear, strong packing tape (available for sale at your local post office) to tape your graphic down to the wood. The best kind of tape I've found is manufactured by "Scotch" and is about two inches wide. It's very strong. Here's a tip: if the sticky side of the tape smells like vinegar, it's probably high in quality. Start by taping down the top of the piece of paper, and overlap strips of tape all the way down, until the entire graphic is covered and taped to the wood.

The next step is to get a lightweight tack hammer and a coarse-threaded woodscrew that's a couple of inches long. Hold the prepared plaque on your lap. Place your woodscrew perpendicular to a line in your picture. Using your tack hammer, give it a light tap. This will create a small hole underneath the paper. Now move your woodscrew slightly to the right along the same line and tap it again. Repeat this process for every line in the drawing, until the image has been transferred, dot-by-dot, to the wood.

Here's a part of the process that I absolutely love! Remove the tape and picture from the wood to reveal the image underneath. You'll be amazed!

Now, plug your woodburning pen into a socket and let it heat up for about five minutes. Take a small scrap of wood and place the tip of the woodburning pen on it, letting it burn into the wood for about five seconds. Remove the pen. Do you see a black dot? If you do, the woodburning pen is ready to use. Turn your attention to your plaque.

Place the tip of the woodburning pen over each small hole that you made with your tack hammer. As you burn each hole, it will turn black. Every hole you burn will make your picture more complete. Burn all the holes on your plaque, and you will see a completed picture!

Don't stop there. You have a beautiful picture on a plaque now, but it could use some color! Paint your picture with waterbased paints. Small bottles are readily available at Wal Mart and are under $2 per color. I prefer to use paints made by "Apple Barrel", but "Folk Art" also makes excellent paints. Just use narrow enough brushes ("One Stroke" makes the best ones) to stay within the lines of your picture. Put three coats of paint on your plaque.

Finish your plaque with several coats of either Minwax or Helmsman Spar Gloss Polyurethane, letting each coat dry completely before you apply the next one. (I usually apply about six coats, but I'm a perfectionist. Doing this makes a plaque look extremely beautiful and shiny, like it's been fiberglassed!) Don't forget the back! The best thing I've found to apply polyurethane is foam brushes. They can be purchased in multipacks for a little over a dollar. I've also found that I can use the same brush over and over again for a couple of days if I put it in a Ziploc bag between coats and store it in the refrigerator. I used to use real paintbrushes, but found that even when I cleaned them with paint thinner, they became stiff after a couple of days and were unusable. The practice became very expensive, so I switched to foam brushes. I PREFER them for this reason.

Don't limit yourself to pictures! You can use this same technique to burn stencil patterns, too, and there are some beautiful ones available on the market!

Experiment with the technique I just described, and you may find yourself developing many beautiful crafts suitable for selling or giving as gifts. The possibilities are endless!

Happy woodburning!