Flamingos II Tray Table by Brenda

Flamingos II Tray Table by Brenda

Hi, I am Brenda Hopkins, and my company "2 Flamingo Chicks" is based in Florida, USA

I have been involved behind the scenes, working as one of the Aussie Decor Transfers USA Distributors for the past 2 years.

I am stepping out to do my first blog, I hope you enjoy and learn from it.

I found this cute rattan table with a removable tray. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Being in Florida I love to use tropical designs and love flamingos, hence my company name.

So, I cleaned it up and did a quick spray to change it to a glossy black.

I am going to use Flamingo II - Rub on Transfer for this project.

I know I want this Flamingo which I think will fit in the center and the tropical leaves in the background.

First, I will add the background. As you can see the tropical leaves do not fill up the tray completely, I will address this later in this article. 

Next, I fitted the background of the tropical leaves to the tray and trimmed them with an exacto knife.

I then took my Black Tool and started in the middle and gently pressed to all the outter edges to get most of the air out.  I then used the Black Tool to rub the entire transfer so that it adhered to the surface of the Tray.  

Hopefully you can see below the difference between where the transfer has adhered (faded color – right side) and not yet adhered (more bright – left side).

Once you think it looks adhered to the surface, begin pulling back the top acetate sheet, if an area has not adhered to the surface, lay the acetate sheet back down and rub again. Do this until completely adhered to your surface.

Next take the top acetate sheet and rub the image gently to burnish the image to the surface. This step is helpful in making sure the image is adhered properly and helps removes any halo around the image.

Now to address the edges that did not fill in fully with the image:

I took the remnants from the trimming of the image and cut out some leaves and layered them around the blank areas.  

I did this until the areas were filled in, the images are so thin that this is not noticeable.

Now we have the background completed, I love the tropical look.   At this point you might want to stop.  But I still wanted that Flamingo on this tray.

I did not like the entire Flamingo as it looked overbearing to me, so I decided to let this Flamingo sit down, by trimming off the legs.

To finish up I put on a top coat using a water base sealer. I like using a sponge  to prevent any brush stokes.  Make sure there is not too much sealer on the sponge, this will help keep any bubbles out of the application.

I put two coats on since this will be used as a tray, for protection.

Finished!

** Note:  If you notice any air bubbles in your images after your top coat begins to dry, you can use a straight pin to gently puncture and then gently rub out the air bubble.  

You should put on another top coat layer for protection after this process.