Inkjet Printer Photo Experiment

I have always loved the idea of being able to transfer a photo.  So last month I experimented with transferring a photo onto wood using gloss medium.  Honestly the drying time and then the rubbing time was way to much for me.  I had to let the image sit overnight and then I had to rub and rub and rub and rub (see where I'm going with this) until the paper came off that left the photo behind.  Needless to say I wasn't very happy with the results of all that work.  So I put that idea on the backburner until I watched some more videos this week on inkjet photo transfer.  I saw a whole new technique that allowed instant satisfaction. So I decided to try the new method because i happened to have all the supplies sitting around our place. We had saved a bunch of wood ends from our shop build so I gathered a few of those and sanded them down.  

The first attempt went okay.  I put it directly on the wood and thought it didn't have enough contrast so next I tried lightly brushing the wood with white paint and then putting on the image.  It seem to turn out a lot better.  Next I wanted to try a color image so I printed out one of my owl paintings that was bright and colorful. The transfer went well but I didn't get the image centered.  So I got the idea to use some spray inks to fix it and to try as a background effect.  I really like how it turned out 

and put a black and white image transfer over the top.  I decided to try an actual photo image and experimented with small blocks of wood.  I watched one video where the wet the wood first and then applied the image.  I tried that method and my inks ran together.  I also tried applying the image and rubbing it in but that seemed to smear stuff too. So in the end I just printed my image out on the waxy paper and pressed it onto the block.  It turned out good.  I also tried to do a much more detailed image that was in all purple shades and that one didn't work at all.  So it seemed the bright colors or the black and whites seemed to work best.  It also appeared that the surface I was transferring onto needed to be pretty smooth unless I really wanted the grainy look.  

Here is the video I watched about how to transfer an image with an inkjet printer.