Do you want to try a little magic?

Find an image in a magazine and tear it out.
Place a strip (or strips) of packing tape over the image and rub hard to adhere the packing tape to the magazine page.
Place your taped image into a bowl of warm water and let sit for a few minutes. Then begin rubbing the paper gently off the back side of the tape.
When you have rubbed all the paper off, PRESTO!… you have a transparent image of your original magazine picture!

I know, it doesn’t make sense, but it works. You can also try the same procedure on photocopies and laser printed images, but inkjet prints won’t work (so they say…I have not tried any of those yet!) This video explains the whole process.

The art challenge for the first week of September in the Documented Life Project was to do a photo transfer with the journaling prompt: From here to there.

I found a beautiful waterfall picture in a magazine for my background. I did not make a transfer of this image though. I just used it for the background of my page, adding gesso to soften the edges. I did make packing tape transfers of two other images I found in magazines of ballet dancers.

When Melinda was a young girl, she took ballet classes, but stopped as a young teen. She tells the story of her experience dancing as a child and how she started ballet again as a young mom in this post. She dreamed of being able to dance on pointe and was given the opportunity a few weeks ago and loves it! I am proud of her for her willingness to pursue her creativity in dance and fulfill a dream.

I used a white pen and a ballerina stencil to add three fairy ballerinas to the top of the waterfall. At the bottom of the page I covered the magazine text with blue paint and wrote ballet dance terms in pencil, then stenciled ballet shoes on top.