While I was in Utah I had the great pleasure of meeting with Sherri Haab. She is so helpful and wonderful. She was very busy and I promised to be very quick while visiting her, but she continued to answer questions that I had regarding a  couple of the systems that she and her husband have developed. Well, my 15 minute stay ended up being 1 hour and 15 minutes. I will be featuring another of her systems in a Tool Time Tuesday in the next few weeks when I show you how to use the Electro-etching system. It is really cool!

Today however, I want to show you another of the neat processes that she has come up with, the Image Transfer System. This is so easy that my 10-year-old helped me with this project. I will show you a few things that we messed up, that wouldn't have been messed up had we actually followed the instructions.


The package actually comes with the solution and 5 sheets of paper for you to print your own images on. It also comes with a 1200 grit fine polishing film. You will need a laser printer or copier in order for this process to work. InkJet printers will not work.

In this picture you can see that we have chosen and cut out a couple of images to use. Most of the pieces were done on copper, but notice also that there is a scrabble tile with the butterfly. This process also works on other materials such as plastic, wood, brass, silver, etc. The image will be a little more diffuse in color once the process is all done.


Before we can really get going on this, you need to give your material a little bit of "tooth" to really grab the solution and image. Here my we are lightly sanding the metal with 320 grit sand paper. You don't have to go this gritty with the paper. A 600 grit paper would be just fine. I just had this little bit of paper sitting there so it is what I used.


Apply a SMALL drop of the ITS Solution onto your surface. A little bit of this stuff goes a long way. You won't be buying more of this solution anytime soon. You need to work quickly on this step and there is no picking the image back up once you have placed it down, so place it carefully.


Once you have applied your solution, rub it around with your finger to get even coverage. Quickly place your image on the surface. We had a wet paper towel right at hand so we could wipe off the excess solution on our fingers.


Using a credit card or other flat, hard surface lightly push from the center out to remove any air bubbles and ensure good contact of your image onto your surface. We didn't have a credit card handy, but we did have these little cardboard coasters so that is what we used and it worked well. Wipe away any excess solution around the edges with a damp paper towel or your finger.


The next step is to heat cure the image and solution. You have a couple of options here. One is to place the piece into an oven and heat it up for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees. Or if you are like me and are too impatient to wait that long you can use a heat gun for 1 minute. This little heat gun is the type you can get for embossing.


Once you have heat set the images move them into a bowl of water for 10 minutes. You can see the paper beginning to soak the water from the edges. This is kind of a fun process to watch as you will begin to see your image as the paper continues to soak up the water.


Once you have finally waited for the paper to soak, you can remove the paper starting at the center. Use your finger nail to remove the majority of the paper and then rub in a circular motion to continue removing the backing. There will be a little bit of a white film left once you are done. If the paper gets too dry before you are done, I found it helps to place it back into the water for a couple of minutes.


Here you  can see a little bit of that white film I mentioned above. At this point take your 1200 grit finishing paper and continue to work at the image. I also found it helpful to wet the film with some water to help the process along.

In this image you can also see one of the things we learned. You really ought to cut your image to the size of your metal, or at least cut closer to the image otherwise you will end up with a border around the image that may not be quite the desired look you were after.


Here are the finished pieces to this point. We took a little leaf stamp and embellished the nest a little bit, though it doesn't show super well in the picture. The bird picture will have some embellishing done to help hide where we poorly cut the image. But the rest of the pieces look pretty good. Their colors, while a little more diffuse from the original image, are still bright and look great.

If you have text on your images, you will want to be certain that you reverse them before printing or your text will appear backwards on your piece.


One last step to make your images practically indestructible and permanent is to seal them. Sherri offers both a glossy and matte sealer. You simply brush a thin layer onto the entire piece and heat set them in the oven on 325 for 30 minutes. There are no shortcuts for this one, it must be done in an oven and not with a heat gun.

If you do not wish to seal it with one of the sealers you can do a final finish on them by rubbing a little Renaissance Wax with a soft cloth for  a lovely sheen.

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