diy rub-on transfers, emily's easy way

hokay. for these programs, the cd sleeves came pre, uh... sleeved, so i couldn't print directly onto them. i needed some kind of diy rub-on transfer to make my own design. i dutifully googled the process and pretty much came up with the same thing over and over: the hairspray technique. this involves spraying an overhead transparency sheet with hair gel and allowing it to dry, printing your desired image with an inkjet printer and allowing that to dry, spraying another layer of hairspray and (you guessed it) allowing that to dry, then commencing with the transfer. ok.

phase 1: i acquire (5) transparencies for less than two dollars at the campus bookstore. (in the end, one would have been sufficient, two the maximum necessary.) on the way home, i acquire suave hairspray. not gel, which may or may not have been a factor.

phase 2: my computer is away for repairs and i antsily try a few transfers without re-reading the directions using an image on rob's computer. so i used regular hairspray, again, not gel. i did allow it to fully dry. the ink, however, flatly refuses to dry, even over several hours. i don't remember that i'm supposed to apply another hairspray layer, and i try the transfer. not wholly bad, but not good, either. definitely not of a usable quality. i decide to wait until i have my own computer back.

phase 3: phase 2 basically repeated but with the correct image on the correct surface (one of the cd sleeves). it's really not... working. the images are really faded. most of the ink seems to be staying on the transparency. i finally realize i'm supposed to add the second layer of hairspray, which i do, which doesn't make a difference.

phase 4: regroup. the interwebs tell me i can buy rub-on transfer paper. special paper you just print your image onto and ta-da! your rub-on is ready. we go to the local artisan/craftsman supply store where the girl at the counter has no idea what i'm talking about and from what appears to be a quaalude trance tells me how i can accomplish my objective with a chemical called xylene. i opt not to follow her advice. (for the time being. i've googled this to and for some projects, it holds promise.) we move on to michael's where they have even less of an idea of what i could be talking about and recommend staples. at staples, i finally give up and think "hmmm... iron-on transfers. who knows?" and buy the iron-on paper.

phase 5: right. iron-ons leave a big sticky glossy area wherever you put the paper down, and although ironing onto cardboard is surprisingly fire- and smoke-free, it is clearly not going to be the answer. pissed off, frustrated, and more determined than ever, i return to the transparencies. i try a side-by-side comparison: the full-on two-layer hairspray-image-sandwich ultra-drying time technique, and a straight-up, no-hairspray, instant-wet-ink-transfer technique. guess which prevails, hands down?

now, i could definitely have been doing something wrong. i could have. i didn't use the gel stuff, i might not have let things dry enough, maybe it's the material i was transferring onto - the cardboard is slightly ribbed and it was hard to get the ink into the little crevasses. i don't know. what i do know is that i tried it all and the only thing that actually gave me exactly the result i wanted was just printing straight onto the transparency, no other materials required. and here is how it goes:

1. get your image ready to print. important: you must reverse the image before printing it. yes, i know, but i managed to print mine the wrong way more times than my pride allows me to admit. the finished product will be a mirror-image of what prints.
2. insert your transparency into the printer and print.
3. print settings: i played around and decided that "best" was, well, best. i don't know what your printer's equivalent is. anything of "normal" or lower quality didn't produce quite enough ink, and "max dpi" was too much ink - it smeared coming out of the printer.
4. so, having printed your image, don't let it dry! now, really, a hefty amount of ink on a plastic sheet isn't going to dry all that quickly, so you're not exactly racing against the clock to get this done. you should work quickly, but my point is take your time in positioning the image and getting things ready. you're not going to ruin anything by not transferring in the first 30 seconds. oh, note: i found that if i waved the sheet around too much or held it vertical too long, the ink would run and smear a bit. keep it horizontal and still as much as possible.
5. position your image, ink side down, on whatever you are transferring it to. i used painter's tape (because that's what was handy) to hold the edges down for the transfer. second note: before giving it a good rub, i sort of just pressed the whole thing down. the initial blots of ink got soaked up by the cardboard that way, drastically minimizing the chance of smear & blur.
6. i used a wooden spatula for the rubbing. i'd tried a big ol' metal spoon per the hairspray tutorials, but it didn't have much surface coverage and seemed to scrape the transparency plastic all up. the spatula was nice - lots of even coverage to get the whole image at once, and the smooth edge didn't scratch much.
7. so just give the whole thing a nice, even, solid rub. it doesn't really take long. remember, the ink is wet, so you're just giving it enough contact to soak in.
8. peel the plastic away and you have completed your transfer - fantastic!

i mentioned that the cardboard on the cd sleeves was slightly ribbed. my first successful transparency-only transfer was on the reverse side of the failed iron-on transfer. at first, i thought perhaps that somehow the ironing had flattened out some of the ridges because it never went as smoothly on non-ironed parts. but i tried ironing a few more and it didn't make much difference. i finally realized that i had also rubbed and rubbed and rubbed several test images on the ironed side, too - that was what had smoothed out the surface. so for my project, i have to use the wooden spatula to rub the surface smooth before doing the transfer. once i do that, it works just beautifully. depending on your project, you may have to experiment with different surface treatment techniques to get exactly the effect you're looking for. have fun!