I’ve been messing around with my transfer technique a little more. I printed off a few of my pictures with a color laser printer onto the sticker backing sheet. The color print was very delicate, where I touched the print it scraped very easily. That being said it made a very interesting edge on one of the images- I used my finger nail and scraped the image edge up a bit to make it uneven- very cool looking.
Again, large areas of color didn’t transfer as well as smaller areas and line work. Go figure that something that is actually MORE detailed transfers better. But the breaks that appear in a larger full color image are very very cool. They look like something that has weathered in the rain and had layers peeled off.
Any areas of yellow left the sheet stained. I’m not sure this will transfer to other images or not, I’ll try that out a little later. Blues and reds transferred the best, yellows stained the sticker sheet but still transferred.
The printer I was working with was a much better printer than the cheap brother I have at home, and I expect that the quality of the HP toner has as much to do with the crisp transfer as anything else.
- Smooth paper works best for this technique.
- High heat on the iron works best. Move the iron around gently.
- Peel the sticker sheet off after it is cooled for about 15 seconds, or more if it’s too hot to touch comfortably.
This whole thing has me wondering about printing onto other slick coated stock- would I be able to do a transfer with magazine stock? I've had printing snafus with my work printer when adding address information to company stock materials. I wonder if I just over printed one of those pages if I could just transfer it?
This begins more experimentation and a search for slick paper stock.
These are recent journal entries and I've edited out some of the content.
Just as an FYI the Schlitz can has sold, in case you needed it for your dirtbag nasty beer can collection.