First adventures in decoupage

I've been curious about decoupage for a long, long time. I've also had a cheap-o box with a cheesy picture of a happy couple for a long (singular) time. I didn't take too much care when doing this - I realized one of the reason I'd probably been putting this off was because I was overthinking it.  I just chopped up one of my Bizarre magazines and off I went with a paint brush and some Mod Podge (which is basically the same as PVA glue, I think). I made sure the wood wasn't dusty or anything, gave it a layer of the glue, smoothed my paper over it, covered with another layer of glue, and left to dry thoroughly.

I'm pretty happy with this result - it's a bit more convenient for opening and rooting around in than my current jewelery box. And then I thought, gosh, I haven't made any jewelery in a while.

This was made with Shrinky Dink (well, the brand I use is called Poly Shrink and I buy it here)*, which, if you've never heard of it before, is friggin' amazing stuff. Before use it's A4 sheets of what essentially feels like thick acetate. You draw what you want on, either with markers, crayon, pencils, whatever (you may need to sand the sheet before using crayons or pencils. Markers wise, I've only got good results with Sharpie brand), cut it out, punch out any holes you may want, and pop it into an oven for a few minutes. Then it comes out all beautiful and small and hard - perfect for making custom jewelry.

*They're not paying me or anything, I'm providing the link as I found they provide somewhat reasonable postage to Ireland. It's hard to get awesome craft stuff sent here sometimes.


While I was at it, I made my friend Mo a phone charm - ssh, don't tell her!

This was really something of a bonanza evening - I'd had so much fun with the jewelry box I decided to try another decoupage idea which I've been thinking about for a while. Have you ever noticed how interesting the inside of some envelopes can be? Like the letters you get from the bank and other things? Yesh, me too. I've been hoarding them lately and, with the help of a friendly cereal box, made some gift tags.

 

I haven't punched holes in them yet. Apart from the hearts, the rest of them were just cut into random polygons. I may neaten some of them up before using them.

Some of the envelopes were much more interesting than the others - like below, for example. I couldn't believe anyone would put such fancy papers on the inside of the envelope! It was actually an envelope scavenged from my mum's house, so maybe there had been a particularly unpleasant bill inside. Oh well, that's it for now. Hope whoever (if anyone) is reading this has a lovely weekend (can you tell I'm in a good mood? I had a presentation at work today which I was dreading, but it went ok. Huzzah!)