Decoupage Cat

Jessica has turned her hand to decoupage this week. She cut up lots of squares of decorative tissue paper while I was busy doing the washing up then I helped her to stick them all onto the mache cat that we'd bought in one of our many visits to Hobbycraft. We use a mixture of water and PVA glue as an adhesive. She was more than capable of doing most of it independently but I helped with the tricky areas like the tail. Jess chose blue crystals for the eyes and once completely dry I will cover the whole cat in an acrylic varnish to finish her project. 

Handmade Bauble Ideas

This time last year I was coming to the end of my rather long break from blogging so I didn't actually share any of our tree decorations from last year. So, here they are:

Decoupage onto cardboard or polystyrene balls...

Using marbling inks on cardboard and polystyrene shapes...

Hama bead designs...

Jessica's acrylic painting on polystyrene and mache shapes...

Salt dough, cookie cutters, acrylic base coat and sharpies...

Candy cane and pipe cleaner reindeers...

Miniature photo frames. I created these for myself, my sister and my Mum's siblings after she passed away in 2016...

Disney Princess Christmas Tree

Jess is thrilled with our Disney Princess Christmas Tree creation made from a £5 Hobbycraft blank in very little time. We painted the tree (front and back) with acrylics before smothering it in glitter glue. The baubles were made using decoupage techniques and printed images of Jessica's favourite princesses. I had to be quick and light-handed to avoid the ink running but they worked quite well. I suggested that we also glue pom-poms all over the tree but Jessica rejected my suggestion. She's now going to spend the whole festive season rearranging the princesses I think.

Funky Shelf for under £2

Katryn needed a shelf to put her TV on so I got another one of those cheap shelves from IKEA and funkified (upcycled!) it for her. Her bedroom is pink but I distinctly remember her telling me that she wasn’t a big fan of pink anymore so I went for something that would last longer. As it turns out, I couldn’t drill more than a centimetre into any of her walls so the shelf has not even been used but nevermind! This isn’t really decoupage because I didn’t use small bits of paper but the general principles are the same. I used PVC glue to attach left over bits of wrapping paper to the edges and then top and bottom before varnishing the whole thing to seal it. I’m confident that it would have looked great on her wall but c’est la vie.