Hi John,

Thanks. It gets a lot of attention.

It's one, big paper overlay. I then accented with paint and inlays in wood. The Queen of Hearts card is about 2 feet wide by over 3 feet tall.

I designed the entire image full scale on the computer using Photoshop and then printed it out as a poster on about 9 sheets of US letter paper. I used multiple sheets because one big sheet couldn't handle the compound curves. It's regular copy paper.. nothing special. I did use an Epson inkjet which has inks that are more light stable. They don't fade in sun like the HPs.

The individual sheets were then trimmed and laminated to the bare wood using epoxy. They stayed pretty tight to the wood so I didn't bother devising any clamping system. When cured I then inlaid the various details in wood. The hair is walnut, the crown is maple burl, the rose is cherry, etc. I painted all the fine details using artist acrylics. If you look close enough in the below picture you can see the edges of the individual sheets of paper.

A final layer of 6oz E glass and more epoxy encapsulates the paper. Think of the paper as just another layer in the lamination. The final coating was 4 coats of Captain's varnish.

It was a bit of an experiment at the time... It's been four years since I did it and it still looks as good as day one. The colors haven't faded a bit. No delamination either... I wish it could have been all wood but I'd do another in a heartbeat.

The hatches are solid wood: maple burl veneer that was dyed red.

Dan

: How did you do the overlay on the Queen of Hearts posted below
: in another thread talking about hatch shapes? What materials did you use?
: That really looks fantastic!!!