Difficulty with Water Transfer Technique

Boy, I'm having trouble with the water transfer technique as taught in the book "Artist Trading Card Workshop" by Bernie Berlin.

I am hosting an ATC swap on swap-bot.com using that technique.

Last week I worked to select images to use. I worked with my husband to print them off as I don't know how to use the program he uses to print them.

Four days ago I had time and energy and desire to work on these ATCs. I was so excited. I began to work. One after the other, the technique failed. Instead of transferring the image entirely, I got a little smudge here and there of ink. Ugh. I tried some other ways of doing the transfer. I used a brayer. I used the back of a spoon. I wetted the paper more. I rubbed it longer. I soaked the image for hours in water. Nothing worked.

I then tried an alternate technique that I made up myself. It was all wet and looked
good.

Then I began getting emails and reading notes on the site that others were having trouble with the technique.

The alternate technique I tried was a failure, which was apparent after the papers had dried for more than a day.

Now this is not fun anymore.

I had to come up with a work-around. Those of us in the swap who were unable to make this work are faced with a problem. If we can't get it to work how can we fulfill the swap? I decided that if anyone tried it and it didn't work they could use any other transfer technique and make decent looking ATCs to swap out. They were then to write a note to their swap partner explaining how the water transfer technique failed despite their best efforts.

Yesterday I took time to edit the swap data on swap-bot. I then emailed all the participants to tell them of this change.

Now I need to make the new ATCs!

Right now I'm having a burst of creativity but it is to do things that I know will work and not to experiment with new art techniques.