Decoupaged vintage ornaments

Hi everyone!

Christmas is almost here and I am so excited! These days I had such a great time crafting the last decorations, while listening to Christmas songs, and today I finally completed my tree adding some final ornaments.

The steps I used to complete these little creations are the ones of sphere 1 that you can find here, but this time, instead of buying decorative paper with the manufacturer’s graphics, I had my own designs printed (yayyy!!!!)

It was such a long time I wanted to do it! Each time I visited Graphics Fairy’s website, I was amazed by the gorgeous vintage images she was posting and I kept imagining them decorating my tree. A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start doing!

First of all, I downloaded 3 beautiful graphics: a cute elf girl, a sweet cat and a lovely dog. I then I cut, resized them, and modified saturation and brightness in order to unify the designs. I also added a common background and small decorative leaves in front of every image, before cropping them in the shape of a circle, so that they would fit on my Christmas plexiglass baubles.

I was able to get everything printed by Calambour, a company located here in Milan that produces mulberry paper. Personally, I really like the job they did: images are crisp, the result professional, and people at their office very helpful, so I will ask them again if I will need more printing. If you wish to print by yourself however, you could use regular paper or try the steps of this tutorial to print on mulberry paper with your inkjet printer.

And here are my beauties! I love how I was finally able to get those gorgeous graphics on my tree…everything turned out just as I wanted (and I am happy, happy, happyyyyy!!!).

I wish you a lovely day and joyful holidays!

P.s. If you don’t want to miss any crafty project, remember to follow the blog by clicking on the “join this site” button in the right column ;-)

Romantic decoupaged candle dish

Hi everyone!

Today’s creation’s story begins a couple of weeks ago, when walked into one of my favourite shops to get a candle for the vintage candle holder I had just created. I didn’t go there on purpose, so I didn’t have with me the exact measurements of the piece, but I still decided to buy the candle that looked closer to what I needed.

I once again proved that using memory to guess the right size is something I should never do, since apparently, my failure is not limited to my boyfriend’s t-shirts (2 wrong size gifts in a row). When I got home, I indeed realized that the candle was at least twice the size I needed.

I was already planning to return it, when, a couple of days later I found in a thrift store a dish in which it would fit perfectly (I, of course, found out about the fit later, since when I bought it I just thought it was a nice piece to decorate. I guess I would have otherwise got one that was either way too large or definitely too small).

It was a square, very simple and cheap white porcelain plate, but I believed it had potential. When I got home I started working on it. So I will now stop with the chatting and start sharing the instructions on how to make your own!

Materials:

• Porcelain dish
• Mulberry paper (for background; I used Calambour PAU 36
• Decoupage paper (flowers; I used Calambour CAL 95)
• Primer
• Decoupage glue (or Mod Podge)
• Acrylic sealer (clear)
• Acrylic paints (I used brown, cream and gold)
• Brushes, scissors…
• Optional: masking tape

First of all, I decided which area I wanted to embellish and delimitated it using masking tape. This is not mandatory, but it helped me moving around more straight lines. Knowing how clumsy I can be, I left the center of the dish empty, so that if any wax accidentally spills on the plate, it will not ruin the decoration.

You then need to cover with primer the surface you want to work on, so that the paint will stick to it. Once this coat is dry, you can sponge some acrylics in order to create background texture. I made 2 coats, the first with cream only and the second one mixing some 50% brown, 40% cream and 10% gold paints (see picture2).

After everything dried, I used diluted decoupage glue to attach the mulberry paper (previously cut by tearing the perimeter of the 4 stripes making up the sides of the decoration). I then removed the masking tape and defined the internal and external perimeter tracing lines with gold acrylic paint.

To add some extra interest, I cut out 2 flowers from the regular decoupage sheet and glued them on top (in order to get better adherence, you should dampen the designs before applying the glue). To protect the decoration, I covered everything with 2 coats of sealer.

I wasn’t 100% happy with the effect yet, as the different elements were not perfectly blended together. I then decided to take a couple of extra steps: first of all, I thinned some brown paint, until it got a watercolor consistency and applied it in circular motion with a sponge. This helped unifying the colors. I then added 3 coats of sealer, and used very thin sand paper on the flowers in order to get a more even surface…

And voilà! Here is my final creation! I think I will use it as centerpiece for Christmas dinner. I hope you like it!

Have a lovely day, and come back soon!

My Favourite parties: The Charm of Home - Dwellings - Between Naps on the Porch - Stone Gable - Coastal Charm - A Stroll Thru Life - Home Stories A2Z - Cozy Little House - French Country Cottage - Romantic home - The shabby nest

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New RAW bracelets

Hi everyone!

Today  I want to show you  some brand new bracelets I accidentally created this afternoon. I say “accidentally”, because this wasn’t the plan! This morning I indeed started with the good intention to spend the day finishing ornaments for my Christmas tree. Everything however rapidly changed as I accidentally clicked on my Pinterest shortcut. After days of baubles, candle holders, ribbons and bows, seeing the beauties I had pinned on my jewelry boards, made me crave for beads, so I had to quickly take out all my supplies and start working.

I have to admit it was very refreshing and I am extremely satisfied of the result…so here are my two little beauties inspired by two pieces which you can see on my bracelets board. They both use right angle weave, but with extremely different beads and motives: the first one has as main feature some champagne 2-hole twins and 3mm bronze round beads creating little flowers, with size 15/0 bronze and pearl seed beads adding a frame finely decorated with tiny picots.

For the second bracelet, I instead used 6mm Czech fire-polished beads in 3 different shades of brown, all kept together by matte brown and metallic bronze size 11/0 seed beads. You could use 1 color of fire-polished only, but I think that combining different ones adds some interest to the pattern.

And here are the pictures! I hope you like them, and don’t forget to visit my Pinterest boards for more inspiration.

Have a lovely day!

P.s. If you don’t want to miss any crafty project, remember to follow the blog by clicking on the “join this site” button in the right column ;-)