Transfer Designs with Lazertran

Bring a plain silk scarf to life with the art of your choice.

• Difficulty Level: Beginner
• Completion Time: 15-20 minutes

Watch a video overview:

Lazertran Waterslide Decal Paper allows you to print and transfer your own pictures or designs to nearly any surface, including paper, tiles, windows, walls, stone, candles, and many others. For our test project, we used Lazertran Silk - specifically designed for silk, satin, metal foil and polymer clay - to decorate a scarf.

What you'll need

Before you begin, make sure you have all the supplies you'll need. The list below contains all the products we used to create the example shown in this demo. Materials are optional based upon your own design.

• Lazertran Silk (other varieties available - be sure to choose the one that's best for your surface and printer)
• Scarf 
• Paint-On Dyes
• Fabric Brushes
• Laser Printer and Iron

1. Prep Your Scarf

Iron your scarf as flat as possible on a clean, solid, heat-proof work surface. Make sure it is free of oils, debris, or anything else that may interfere with the design sticking to the fabric.

2. Print and Position Your Design

Put a sheet of Lazertran in your printer and print your design on the shiny side of the paper. For designs that must face a certain way (such as words), reverse the image in a photo-editing program. Position the printed Lazertran, design side up, underneath your silk where you would like your design to transfer.

3. Fuse Your Image

With a hot iron (do not use steam), iron the silk until the Lazertran sheet sticks well to the fabric, roughly 60 seconds or more. Be sure to cover the entire area of the design.

4. Place in Water

Lay the ironed-together scarf and Lazertran paper-side down in a container of clean water. Leave undisturbed in water for several minutes until the paper falls off.

5. Remove

Very carefully remove the scarf from the water. Lay face down upon a cloth.

6. Set and Dry

With medium heat, iron the back of the scarf to help set the design and dry the fabric. For best results, then flip the silk printed side up, cover with a sheet of baking paper or parchment, and iron once more.

7. Add Final Details

If you are limited to black and white printing (as we were in this demo), or even if you are not, you can now add other elements to your scarf too. Fabric paints, dyes (when painted onto scarf - traditional dyeing is not recommended after using Lazertran), and beads are all great ways to add extra interest to your design.

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