For my first spring edition blog I’d like to start off with
some thing near and dear to my heart… GARAGE SALES!!! Yep, It's that time of year everyone! As much as I love garage
sales I have to be honest, one of my favorite things about garage sales is
looking at all the random stuff and trying my hardest to imagine what on earth
the inside of peoples homes must look like to have gone along with some of the pictures laid out on the driveway. (I.E. a watercolor beach scene or a ship on stormy seas…) Where do you put that sort of
thing? Well, I guess that’s why they’re always starring in your local yard
sale. In the spirit of spring, I decided to rescue a few of these pictures from
the dump and try and repurpose them into a modern DIY work of art.
There are two main sections of this project, the picture
itself, and the paper flowers that are attached last. For the first part you’ll
need:
A framed picture without the glass
Scissors
A pencil
A sheet of cardstock
A mop style
paintbrush (you can use any brush you prefer but I’ve found this one to be
really great for getting an even thin coat of paint.)
A paper plate (plastic or Styrofoam are best for mixing
paint without absorbing it)
Acrylic paints (any color you choose, I chose to go with
shades of gray)
Scotch tape
A thin tip
sharpie (not shown here but totally needed if you’ll be incorporating words
into your art.)
For the
Second part (the paper flowers) You’ll need:
Pages from a
newspaper or old textbook (I didn’t have any newspaper so that old textbook I
couldn’t sell back had to go! Old takeout menus or phone book pages would work
also, just start cutting up any unimportant paper you’d otherwise throw out)
The
paintbrush from the first part of the project
The paper
plate from above (cleaned of any other paint colors)
A couple
buttons in colors that coordinate with the colors you used in the first part of
the project
Acrylic paint
(also in colors that match the buttons)
A hot glue
gun
Scissors
The first real step in this project is to decide what
pattern you’re going to go with. I decided on a flower and blank spaces where I
would write out the lyrics to a song I love. You can do literally anything you
want which makes what you’ll come out with so much more awesome (you crafty
crafter you!). Draw out your
design and cut it out, the more pieces you have making up the picture the better. (Draw rectangles of various sizes if you’ll be using
words.)
Learn from my mistakes: No matter what design you choose, draw and
cut the pieces you’ll be painting over a little less than a half inch larger
than you actually want them to be. I know it sounds like a lot but trust me,
the paint smears about an eighth to a quarter inch under the cardstock pieces
once you start painting. This will make the relief pieces of the picture you’ll
see smaller than you want them to be unless you compensate for this in the
beginning. (Frustration number 2 of the day)
Ok, so if you’re working with a picture with glass, remove
it, if the picture isn’t stapled into the frame, remove the frame also to make
painting easier on yourself. Unfortunately, this picture was stapled to the
frame and when I tried to remove the staples it was tearing pieces out of the
matting… (Frustration number one of the day) If your picture was as cheaply
made as mine, just leave the frame on but use Frog Tape (aka a painters best
friend that is FAR superior to all other painting tapes) to make sure you don’t
get the acrylic where you don’t want it.
Take smallish pieces of the scotch tape and roll it sticky
side out into tubes and stick them to your cut out pieces (as seen above).
Place each piece and keep in mind that the paint WILL bleed under the pieces a
good bit (The bleed gives a cool textured/imperfect look. If you don’t want
that, I would suggest cutting frog tape to line each piece of your cut out to
get a really clean line.)
Ok so once you’ve gotten to this point you’re ready for the
fun part. Painting!! Mix your colors on your paper plate doing the darkest
shade first, it will be your base color that will cover the entire painting
surface. Use your brush to LIGHTLY cover the sections of cut out first. You
will be doing 2-3 coats so I really cant emphasize the LIGHTLY part too much. You’ll see streaks through your paint, which
is just fine!
This is how
mine looked as I started, see how you can actually see the streaks of the cream
at the edges of the cutouts? That’s just fine, (possibly even a little too
thick but hey, can’t go back right?) Just go with it! Finish your base color
over the rest of the painting and add a good amount of white to your base color
mixture for it to be noticeably different when painted over the base. Use this
second shade to add a little dimension and accent the places you want people to
look the most.
I felt like 2 colors was still a little flat so I added a
few streaks of white to really make it pop. Finally… the reveal! Take off the pieces while
the paint is still wet. If you wait until the paint dries it will glue
the cutout pieces to the picture and they’ll tear when you take them off
leaving behind pieces of paper… not what you want.
As you can see, this was my first run at this sort of thing
and I didn’t take the advice given above; I cut the pieces the exact size of the amount of the picture I
wanted to see through the paint and the color smudged so you don’t get as much of the relief as I
would have liked, especially in the spaces I left for the words. But again,
can’t take it back so go with it! My last step for this part of the project was
to take a THIN sharpie and write out the lyrics in the open spaces (go over the
words 2-3 times letting the ink dry in between. I did some in cursive and some
in regular print. Then leave it alone for a good hour. If it still looks too
light, go over it one more time, sharpie really soaks in and takes forever to
dry.
If you were able to remove your frame, lucky you! Just spray
paint it with whatever color you choose, spray your picture with a matte spray
varnish (Mod Podge is an awesome option available at Walmart for like 3
dollars) reassemble and BAM! YOU’RE AN ARTIST! If not, find a piece of paper the size of your opening and cover your work in order to spray paint your frame, then remove the paper and spray varnish the whole shebang! DONE!
If you’re like me and looking for a little something more,
go ahead and continue on with the last little sub-project of making the paper
and button flowers.
Take one of the pages and paint it your accent color. Wait
for it to dry, (it will crinkle a little which is great!) then cut out 2 circles
with about an inch and a half difference in the diameters. Scallop some of the
edges, make some of the petals more square or just leave them as circles but
crinkle the edges, it’s really up to you what look you like… have fun with it! Repeat these steps with the unpainted
page.
Hot glue the pieces together alternating colored and
uncolored and finish with the button then glue the whole thing to the picture
wherever seems right!
Note that you never put the glass back on if you’re adding
paper flowers, if you’re not, you can put the glass back in the frame. Don’t throw that glass away! Ill find
something for you to do with it soon…
Did you try it?? Send me a picture I’d love to see what you
came up with and any feedback or tips you may have!
Thanks and happy crafting!
Nicole
