Table re-do with French graphic transfer

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I've had this little table in my garage for a while, and it needed some love.  I know it is solid, but someone did some tole painting on it many years ago, and then it looks like it spent some time outside before I found it.

I knew that removing paint would be a really trying job considering all the curves and crevices, so I decided to get the top looking great and let the legs be a bit shabby chic.

Using some of the "less toxic" paint stripper (the kind that is orange scented) I coated it thickly and laid the plastic tarp over it to let it do its work for about 50 minutes.  Some scraping and most of the paint came off, revealing what appeared to be walnut!  Another coat of stripper and another 30 minutes and the top was pretty clean.  I let it dry and sanded the top clean.  The legs, I used the palm sander to remove some of the paint, but left some too.

I re-stained the top using a dark walnut stain and let it dry.

To do the image transfer, first I picked out a graphic from The Graphics Fairy.  This one is a chocolate label, so of course I love it! I had to flip the image so that the words were backwards (I resized the image in Word, then used the Rotation menu to flip it).  I printed out my image on freezer paper.  I tried it on wax paper and my ink jet printer DID NOT like the light weight of wax paper (it just ate it).  Freezer paper has paper on one side and wax on the other. So just cut a piece of freezer paper to the same size as regular printer paper.  Just set it up so that the image will print on the waxy side.  Be super careful when you remove the paper from the printer that you don't smudge it.

I wiped the table top down with a damp paper towel before I laid the graphic down, waxy side down (the side with the ink on it).  If I were doing it again, I'd cut away all the extra paper from around the image so that it would be easier to center.  Once you set down the image, don't move it.  The ink jet ink will start to transfer to the slightly damp table.  I used a credit card to smooth down the image and get a good ink transfer.

I wiped the table with wax and called it good.  Cute huh?