Transferring Image to Canvas-a Quick Beach Themed Wall Decor

This year, I’ve wanted to add some beach theme color and style to my interior. I’m not a huge fan of the typical flower wall or canvas art you see everywhere, so I decided to make something that would be more personalized for me.

A beach-themed wall canvas made with easy image transfer just seemed like a great idea! It’s simple enough that anyone can do it, and it only requires a few supplies. 

I found this cute pebble image, and I was thinking about printing it and simply framing it. But then I had a stash of canvas waiting to be used, so I decided to make a quick image transfer canvas wall art instead.

If you read my tutorial on transferring images to canvas, you know that the whole process is pretty simple. The final result mostly depends on the quality of the printed image. 

The first step was to print the mirrored image on a laser printer. Since I only have an inkjet printer at home with the A4 format, I printed the image on A3 size in my local printing shop. Laser prints work best for these kinds of transfer projects.

Not saying that the inkjet prints won’t work. They will, but the result is a lot more distressed and if using a color image the colors might not come out true.

Since the color quality of this A3 print was poor I decided to print the image on my inkjet primer (four A4 parts) and do it this way. But although the prints were great the transfer came out horrible as you can see down below.

It’s a shame, but I’ll remove the transfer and reuse the canvas for something else.

I also decided to make three smaller size canvases instead of one big one since I couldn’t get a good quality print of this size in my area.

So off I went to the library and printed the image in smaller size and different magnification.

The printer couldn’t print borderless images so that wasn’t perfect either.

Once that was done, you have to prep the canvas. Cover the canvas with a generous layer of gel medium like Liquitex gel medium in gloss with a paintbrush.

Make sure you cover it thoroughly. The image won’t transfer if there is no medium. the next step is to place the image face down. You want to place it correctly the first time as there won’t be much room for adjusting the image once it touches the medium/canvas.

Use an old credit card to remove any air bubbles/excess medium and smooth out the paper. Then let it dry, preferably overnight.

Once dry, use either a wet cloth or spray bottle to wet the paper. Make sure the paper is thoroughly wet, and then start to rub the paper off gently with your fingers.

The image will be reviled, and the colors more vivid the more paper you remove. But be careful not to rub it too much, or you can end up with the ink coming off as well. 

Once dry, the image colors will be a bit faded. The reason behind it is that the water evaporates, leaving behind a thin layer of paper still on top of the image. To solve this, you can use the veggie oil trick. Use a clean cloth and put some oil onto the canvas. 

The colors will deepen again. And since oil won’t evaporate like water, it will stay like this. Once the oil dries a bit, cover the canvas with another layer of medium to seal the image.

Since one of the canvas was bigger than the image I decided to use silver and white spray paint on the top and the bottom edge. The other two canvas were smaller and pretty much covered so I left them as they were. 

You can see on the pictures above – on the left one are canvases after removing the paper layer and drying; on the right with a coat of veggie oil.

These will hang in my ground-floor washroom, and I’m pretty sure I’ll frame them once I get some materials to do it.

Now you have a canvas with cute pebbles on it! You can hang this in your house or give it to someone as a gift. You can use pictures of your loved ones or beloved pets. Anything else in that matter.

I hope you enjoyed this article on how to make a DIY pebble picture transfer onto canvas. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below! Happy crafting and happy creating!