Gettin' Made: Picture That

We all have those special pictures, the ones that just kind of stand out in our mind. Maybe it's a favorite moment in time, an expression on a friend's face, the larger than life quality of a certain celebrity picture--those images deserve to be preserved and presented in a manner just as precious as the photos themselves.

Tilano photo transfer projects completed by members of the Long Beach Craft Mafia--check out that RuPaul coaster on the right!

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Canadian craft company Tilano is looking to give you new ways of showing off your photos with their new photo transfer project kits. With their kit, a laser printer and a little following of simple directions you can make glass magnets, marble coasters or stretched canvas artwork using your most treasured photos without damaging them at all.

After the jump, Long Beach Craft Mafia demonstrates the simple steps to Tilano photo transfer success, and gives you a chance to win a free kit or one of the finished projects.

I brush the Tilano medium onto the laser-printed images to prep them for tranferring.

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First up, you prepare your chosen image for transfer. Print it out on the special Tilano transfer paper using a laser printer--ink jet printers won't do it for ya! Then brush the Tilano medium onto your image and let it dry for a while. We're a tad bit impatient, and found that using a hair dryer really helped speed up the process.

New mafia member Janice Sprenger of WanderLove and Kelso Cooper of Kelso Doesnt Dance apply their images to glass magnets.

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Next up, we applied the Tilano medium to the surface where the image would be applied, and  put the image face-down on top of it.

New mafia member Jennifer Martin of RADCo smooths out the image on the surface of her Tilano marble coaster.

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Once you lay your image down, it's important to smooth out all of the air bubbles or wrinkles so you have a nice smooth image on the finished product. The Tilano photo transfer kits come with all the needed supplies which is super handy; when the little plastic spreader is included there's no need to go hunting for a popsicle stick or piece of cardstock to do the job!

Jennifer Martin of RADCo told us a little about how she chose the dogs photo she used to make a marble coaster: "I chose to make a coaster for my grandmother using a photo of her two dogs.  They're looking up at the camera when the photo was shot, so i thought it would be a funny coaster almost as if they were looking up at the coffee mug that was about to be placed on them!"

On the next page, the big reveal and a chance to win!