My first Pic and Mix was etched by scratching through a paint resist as suggested by Peter (G3XJP) in the initial articles. I found this very tedious although it worked well so thought the "iron on" idea was brilliant. .. It is too and most innovative. It worked perfectly except that my artwork was a few mm too long in relation to its height .... a vagary of my epson 760 printer which I can now cope with. The result was that the ic's didn't fit as the hole spacing was too wide! Our local copy shop is only fair and often tends to have odd dots and bits (albeit very small) on copy work. I have therefore continued to use overhead projector (transparency) film and print the image in dense (photographic) resolution on this and then use the transparency to make a PCB in the usual way with sensitised board. The film from WH Smith is quite cheap and fine for most purposes but see below.
I acquired a UV box a few years ago but before that about 45 secs to 3 minutes clamped in an old contact print frame in bright sunlight used to work well. Yes I know the sensitised board is expensive but you can then do it all at home and get it right rather than a trip into town to get a laser copy made. I am using still a batch lot of board (I think it came from Greenweld) about 8 years ago and it still works fine. Incidentally I did try iron on inkjet transfer sheets.... They do not work as you get a lovely image but a complete film on the board so nothing etches through. For the codec and really fine work I recommend the special inkjet transparency film available from Rapid Electronics. This allows you to print (in reverse) on the shiny side of this special film and the quality of the circuitry is excellent.. I have attached a few pictures to this page.