I bought some small plywood chairs, and want to decorate them.
September 24, 2022 10:06 PM Subscribe
I bought some small bent-plywood chairs and would like to try decorating a couple of them. I really like the look of colorful images heat-pressed onto plywood skateboards and am hoping to acheive something similar.
Because the chairs are formed from one piece of plywood, they basically have two sides—the “top/front” and the “underside/back”. I am mostly interested in just covering one side, so that the plywood could still be seen on the other.
Here are a couple of images with my ideas: https://imgur.com/a/33qqNsU
I know there are companies online that can “heat press” your custom image onto plywood skateboard decks. I would like to acheive the same kind of look, but obviously, I don’t have a way to easily “heat press” any printed design I make to the curved chairs.
Ideally, I would like to have an image printed onto a thin surface that could easily be adhered to the curved plywood of chair. The template for “one side of” these chairs would easily fit in a printed rectangle about 48” tall by about 16” wide.
Does this sound do-able?
Are you aware of better solutions that simply
getting a big print,
applying it to the chair myself with some adhesive,
trimming the edges
and then applying some sort of gloss coat?
I hope to avoid the chair looking like some bumpy découpage project and more like the image is really a part of the chair (like how the heat-pressed images on skateboards look)
(My other ideas would be applying patterned paper or a thin sari fabric (the latter images on the above imgur post), or masking and spray-painting)
Thoughts?
Because the chairs are formed from one piece of plywood, they basically have two sides—the “top/front” and the “underside/back”. I am mostly interested in just covering one side, so that the plywood could still be seen on the other.
Here are a couple of images with my ideas: https://imgur.com/a/33qqNsU
I know there are companies online that can “heat press” your custom image onto plywood skateboard decks. I would like to acheive the same kind of look, but obviously, I don’t have a way to easily “heat press” any printed design I make to the curved chairs.
Ideally, I would like to have an image printed onto a thin surface that could easily be adhered to the curved plywood of chair. The template for “one side of” these chairs would easily fit in a printed rectangle about 48” tall by about 16” wide.
Does this sound do-able?
Are you aware of better solutions that simply
getting a big print,
applying it to the chair myself with some adhesive,
trimming the edges
and then applying some sort of gloss coat?
I hope to avoid the chair looking like some bumpy découpage project and more like the image is really a part of the chair (like how the heat-pressed images on skateboards look)
(My other ideas would be applying patterned paper or a thin sari fabric (the latter images on the above imgur post), or masking and spray-painting)
Thoughts?
A gel medium transfer could work for this application, I think, and might even work with the map you already have cut out. I would of course experiment first using some of the scraps and a spare bit of plywood, but the steps are these:
posted by wreckingball at 7:03 AM on September 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
- If you don't want the plywood showing through (only the printing will transfer, not the white of the paper), paint any surface to receive the transfer white. I would use some kind of matte-finish spray paint.
- Adhere the map, print-side down (text and images will be mirrored) to the entire surface using acrylic gel medium (from the painting/art supply section of the craft store). Be sure to completely smoothe out any bubbles or creases. Let dry completely.
- Working one small area at a time, use a wet rag to saturate the back of the paper and gently rub it off until only the the printing remains. Let dry completely.
- A "haze" of leftover paper fibres will appear when dry. Use a rag to apply a thin layer of Liquin (an oil painting medium you can buy at art/craft stores—a small bottle should be plenty), which should get rid of this. Any kind of oil or oil-based varnish should work, but Liquin is what I've always used.
- Spray with polyurethane or similar to protect the transfer.
posted by wreckingball at 7:03 AM on September 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: (Just a note that the map I cut out was just to see the size of the template—not the actual image I want to apply to the chair.)
posted by blueberry at 2:34 PM on September 25, 2022
posted by blueberry at 2:34 PM on September 25, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Bardolph at 3:14 AM on September 25, 2022