Citra-Solv Transfer Technic

These are some pages I made at my local book arts group meeting last Saturday.  Pretty cool eh?  Well I at least I think so.  We played around with this technic, which is new to me.  One of our members had tried it, and we loved the results she got, so she offered to teach it to the rest of us.  Regarding the technic itself, I don't know who first developed it or I'd give them credit.  Nor do I know how long this technic has been out there on the net, or in art books.  And of course, I'm not the first person who has put it on their blog.  I googled this technic, and found some others bloggers who've posted about it.  And chances are, other people have modified this technic in various ways, which often happens since artists are innately very creative people.

That being said, I'm thrilled with the results I got.  Here is what we did at our meeting.  We used National Geographic magazines, published within the past 10 years.  Not sure why that matters, but apparently it does.  We used large sponge brushes to spread the Citra-Solve over various pages in our NG mags.  The best pages to use are those with color pictures, and you have to spread the CS over both sides of the page.  Then we let the saturated mags sit for approximately 30 minutes.  The CS needs time to work its magic, but if left too long, the pages stick together.  After 30 minutes, we disassembled the mags to let each page dry.  Some people had to use a craft knife to cut their pages out, but all my pages pulled out very easily.  I don't know why that worked for me, perhaps I used more CS on my pages and it dissolved the glue holding the pages together.  

At our meeting, we did this technic outdoor on a table, because the smell of the CS is quite strong.  It has a powerful orange smell.  I had to leave the meeting early, so I brought my mag home intact and disassembled it on my picnic table on the patio.  I'm also lucky enough to have a clothesline in my yard, so I hung the pages up to dry, which took around 10 minutes.  Also, there are a number of Citra-Solv products, which are natural cleaning agents.  For this technic, you need to use the concentrated CS, which can be bought at natural food markets.  Apparently it's not available at regular grocery stores.  I'm not sure how much it costs, they have different size bottles.  I did go to the company website, and if you register, you can print a coupon for $1.00 off the product.

I don't know much about this technic, except for what we did at our meeting.  I think googling this might give you more information from different blogs.  Who knows, there might even be some youtube videos about it.  As for me, all I did was spread the CS on the color pages of my NG mag, wait a while, and then disassemble the mag, then hang the pages up to dry.  Obviously not a complicated technic, although rather messy with the disassembling part.

My take on this technic is that it's totally unpredictable and rather hit or miss, regarding how your pages will come out.  Some came out great, others were not great at all.  But hey, it's kind of cool regarding the serendipity of this technic.  Beyond that, it's not difficult or too time intensive or too expensive.  A bottle of CS should go a long way.

I'm wondering if any other product would work, or work in a different way???  Such as WD-40 perhaps, which I recently learned is non-toxic and made from -- get this -- fish oil!  As in, who knew?  Or perhaps Amor-All protectant?  I'm always game to try industrial products in my art, products purposed for a totally different purpose.  Hopefully when I have time, I can experiment with these other products.

So anyway, is anyone game in trying this technic?  Or modifying it or "altering" it, or whatever?