Bicycle Bench {Freezer Paper Transfer}

A whole new world has opened up to me - transferring images using freezer paper!

Special thanks to Our Prairie Home for the inspiration and tutorial (who gives credit to yet another blogger... haha).  But when I saw her awesome pillows over a year ago I totally wanted to try it.  On everything.  But... that's me for ya.  Mainly I didn't do it until now because I kept forgetting to buy freezer paper.  Dude, I wasn't really even sure what freezer paper was.

I went to the haven of all graphic art, The Graphics Fairy and found the perfect image of vintage bike.  My mom was pretty sure I should do some beautiful old french typography, which I agree would have looked amazing (perhaps even better) but it's just not really me, yo.  That seems so fancy.  I'm so not fancy.  And we are a biking family.  So the bike just seemed like a good fit.

Let's see what we started with:

This beautiful (in it's day) little bench was actually my mother in law's when she was a little girl.  She gave it to me a few years ago and I knew it had to be turned into something special.  The right inspiration just evaded me... and so it just sat.  In my barn.  Getting more and more faded and lonely.......  I bought some fabric for my new coffee chair that I just adored and knew right away I wanted it to go in this bench. 

 But that was before I took off this:

And it revealed this:

The blank slate was just too much for me to cover up.

I sent to work sanding off the blue jazz.....

Then used spray adhesive to attach the freezer paper to a regular piece of copy paper, so that the waxy side was out and printed my image.  You have to be very careful handling it so the ink doesn't smear.

***THE PRINTER MUST BE AN INKJET!  Will NOT work using a laser printer!!

I positioned the paper where I wanted my image to go and used the back of a spoon to rub the ink into the wood.  I had to go over it quite a bit so that you could see it well.

Ta da!!

Then I put several coats of polyurethane on top.  The first coat just soaked right up into the dry wood and you couldn't even tell I put it on!

I decided to leave the twisted edge that was nailed down around the edge - just to keep some of the authenticity and charm of the piece.

The iron (?) legs were super dirty and rusty so my little girl and I worked together cleaning them with a toothbrush and a baking soda/vinegar solution.  Then I rinsed it off in the bathtub.  Sure wasn't the best idea I've ever had to let it sit there overnight and dry... behold major rusty spots in my clawfoot tub now!  Ack!

Check out the beautiful patina!

And now it's the perfect place to rest my coffee (and feet!) when I'm enjoying my cuppa' joe in my newly redone coffee chair. :)

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