Decoupage!

By Karen May

When I was in elementary school, I kept checking out the same book on decoupage over and over again. I’m still not so sure what was so fascinating about it for me at such a young age, but apparently I enjoyed it enough to keep reading it.

Fortunately, the strange 70s styles in the book didn’t leave an obvious mark on me, and I learned about a craft that can be a great way to give something a new look. And people do decoupage tables, chairs, dressers, shoes, platters, mirror frames, bracelets and lots of other stuff.

For any decoupage project, you’ll need something to cover, something to cover with, glue and something to apply the glue. This is my coin jar. Effective, but boring. We’re going to give it a brand new look in a short amount of time by covering it with pictures of fruit I cut out of a magazine and a flyer we got in the mail.

To stick everything together, I’m using Mod Podge. Mod Podge is a wonderful medium designed for decoupage. Essentially, it’s thinned down white glue, but they sell it in both matte and glossy versions. It serves as both the adhesion and the sealant in one.

This is not your only option. You can use regular glue, glue sticks and shellac, depending on what you’re attaching to what. The sealant you use should depend on the intended use of your item. Obviously, if you’re making a platter to be used for serving food and that will need to be washed, Mod Podge is not the way to go.

First, cut out your pictures. I used an Xacto knife to get just the fruit from the pictures. While you’re doing this, plot out how you want things to be arranged on your item. I’m just going for random fruitiness, but you can get complicated layers if you want.

Next, brush your glue on the back of your picture. By the way, this can get a little messy, so you may want to do this on a surface that is either easily cleaned or that you just don’t care about.

Paste your cutout onto your surface.

If you use magazine photos, the paper used for printing is thin. You might see the words or pictures from the other side of the page showing through, but they should disappear once the paper dries.

Once you have all of your layers how you want them, let it dry. This could take as little as 10 minutes or as long as overnight, depending on your mediums. For Mod Podge you should be OK to work in about 30-45 minutes.

The final step is to seal your item. With Mod Podge, all you need to do is brush a coat over all of the pictures. If you’re using something else, refer to the directions that came in the package.

Let this dry another hour or so, and you should be ready to use your newly decorated item!

Karen is a blogger and crafter who has lived in Charlottesville for 6 years after transplanting from the Shenandoah Valley. While not working or attending classes at PVCC, she blogs about her life at Precision Indecision and about crafts at CraftyKix.