Experimenting with materials

I wanted to find the perfect material for creating the butterflies out of, as I felt that paper or card was too rigid, but also quite boring (unlike the butterflies themselves). In researching into these materials, I looked at transferring the images that I had created onto different surfaces, to maintain the designs as much as possible even at such a small scale.
Initially I printed onto paper, then glued this down onto the wood using Mod Podge. After it had dried, dampening the paper with water enabled me to remove the paper to leave the print still on the wood. Unfortunately this technique didn't work as well as I had hoped, as the colours turned out very faded and not as vibrant as I wanted them to.
I then found another technique where I used wax paper to print the image onto, then pressed this image onto the wood straight away to transfer the ink. This worked better than the other wood transfer technique, and I really liked the outcome but cutting out the shapes would not be as sleek as I would like.
Another material I used was liquid gel, where I added it onto the printed image, put it in the oven to harden it then after cooling, dampen and wipe away the paper to leave the colour image. Unfortunately again, the colour had not been preserved as much as I would like, leaving only the darker colours on the gel, so I won't be using this for the final butterflies.
My favourite so far is the acetate, as the design is visible from both sides, and all of the colours are maintained. The light weight of the acetate is also a good representation, as it mirrors the fragility of the butterflies and moths, drawing towards the main focus of the exhibition.