I made a thing

Yeah, so I made this thing.

When Julie made us (haha) make these Christmas ornaments last weekend, it got me to thinking about making personalized ornaments. This isn't an ornament. It's just a thing.

I picked up a few of these paper mache heart things at Michael's. I first painted the whole thing with Mod Podge. I did that because, as Julie explained about the Gesso, if I didn't put down a base coat first, the paint would just soak up into the thing and get all yucky. I used the matte finish Mod Podge. Then I got out some of my cheapo acrylic paints and painted in the colors I liked. I chose a couple of pinks and painted them all messy-like all over front, sides and back. While that was drying, I picked out the stamps I was going to use. I picked the old ladies stamp by River City Rubber Works and the sentiment by Stampabilities.

After the pink paints dried, I painted on some green and some blue. I let that dry just a little, and then I took a damp paper towel and rubbed some of the paint off so the pink would show through. I let that dry. I dipped a dry paintbrush into the apricot paint and lightly tapped it onto the front, sides and back of the thing.

Then I inked the old ladies up with black StazOn ink and stamped it on the thing. It didn't stamp well so I got my StazOn stamp cleaner out and rubbed off the icky image. I knew it wouldn't bother the acrylic paint because the StazOn cleaner is not water-based. Then I decided to stamp with the StazOn on vellum. I cut out the image and then Mod Podged it on to the heart thing. That worked really well, except I really had to watch for wrinkles and bubbles in the vellum. I had to lift the vellum and do a bit of adjusting. I put lots and lots of Mod Podge on top of the vellum.

I stamped the sentiment on striped paper and then cut out each word. I Mod Podged each word onto the thing where I wanted them and the put more Mod Podge over the whole ornament again. I let it dry in front of the fan and then I got out a regular old black sharpie and made dots all around the edges of the thing and around the image. I signed the back. The thing is done.

It felt good to craft again after being glued to the fire coverage on tv all week. I have another thing in the works. Stay tuned.