Transferring

You may remember that I bought a package of plain puzzles for Maddie for a holiday gift this year.

I plan to give her a couple to decorate, and I’ll paint some for her, too. She loves puzzles!

While I can maybe paint a few and fake it (she loves me, and will put up with my sorry attempts)… I don’t draw. Really. I’m terrible at it.

I’m trying to overcome that flaw.

So what to do?

Aah. Tracing paper.

I tried this project a lot of different ways…. I tried oil pastels and an iron to transfer the wax, I tried crayons, and then finally pencils. Pencils work the best.

A black colored pencil worked,

but half-way through while transferring, I backed up and tried a medium charcoal pencil, and that worked very well.

I traced the coloring book page that I wanted with the charcoal pencil (if you’re using a regualar pencil, make sure it isn’t sharp or it will tear the paper).

Turn the paper over onto the medium (in my case, the puzzle, but you can do with with cloth, paper, or whatever you like)

and then on the clean side of the paper trace over the lines again (anything will do for this, don’t waste your charcoal or nice colored pencils), transferring the first markings onto your surface.

The lines were pretty faint for the first black colored pencil, and I didn’t want them smudged, so I traced over the entire picture (on the puzzle this time) with a sharpie pen.

It’s ready to go!

I’ll place the puzzles in boxes (that I’ve made) and she can color or paint or decorate them as she wishes.

Fun!