DIY Printer Transparency Overlay Thingy

Emma and I are working on a secret project. I can't give out many details, but I can tell you this. It involves this board book we got for free at the library,

 which I stripped the first few layers of paper off of each page so that we could be left with this.

I didn't manage, as you can see, to get every little piece of picture off. Most of the pictures came off in little pieces.

 I did manage, however, to remove a few entire pages that I might try to reuse in the secret project or in a future project.

As I was playing around with what I wanted to do for my secret project, I had the idea that words on transparencies would be kinda neat. That way I could do all the images in the secret project and go back later to add the words where they would fit without having to cut each individual letter out.

I am sure at some point in the last year I probably had some transparencies laying around somewhere, but I have been trying to purge my house of things that haven't been used in a while and that I doubt will be used in the near future.

Transparencies fall into this category. Plastic page protectors do not. Thus, my tutorial for...

DIY Printer Transparency Overlay Thingy

(Yes, that is a technical term)

Materials needed:

Page protectors

Mod Podge

Paint Brush

Scissors

Sheet of paper 

Step 1.

Place a sheet of paper into the page protector (optional). Using the paint brush, apply the Mod Podge to the entire surface of one side of the page protector. Allow to dry.

Step 2.

Once dry, apply a second coat of Mod Podge going in the opposite direction of the first application (not essential, but you will get better coverage).

Step 3.

Place a sheet of paper (I used one that was already printed on) into the page protector for a bit more stability. Using scissors, remove the side of the page protector that allows it to be inserted into a 3 ring binder. Cut as close to the seam as possible. Place the page protector, with the the paper inside, into your printer tray so that the closed side of the page protector is the side that will be grabbed first.

***Make sure you know how your printer works. For example, when my paper is in the tray, the side of the paper that is facing down is the side that will be printed on. Check your printers manual, or run a test page if you are not sure what I am talking about.***

 Tada!

I noticed on my first page (the one where I only did a single coat of glue) that the ink didn't adhere well on the spots that didn't get a good coat of glue. The smudges you see in the picture above are from my attempt to send just the plain page protector through the printer. It smudged like crazy. Hence the reason I decided to apply a coat of Mod Podge :)

If any of this is unclear, don't hesitate to ask questions.