After getting rid of our what seemed to be a thousand pound pull out couch, and getting our new one, we had a playdate, I had to grocery shop, come home to unload everything, go to speech therapy, run to get our car battery checked out, back to speech therapy, then home. I was excited to take a break, and potentially shut my eyes for a minute, but of course that wouldn't happen. The ladies needed snacks, I needed to pick up a bit, then it was too late to try and sneak in a small nap. So I got right into working on the profile silhouettes. It was trail and ever over and over again. This has actually turned out to be a very frustrating project. I went through several different types of paper, and ended up working with a transparent film.
I then went trough several different ideas for the wooden background. I ended up deciding on tinfoiling it. If you don't know what this is, just wait...it's awesome, and you can do it to basically anything. I got the idea from Vintage Revivals, it's an awesome blog you should check out. I first started with the four wooden ovals, tin foil, Modge Podge, a paint brush, and black paint.
Take one of the pieces of wood, and add a thin layer of the Modge Podge. Then rip off a piece of tin foil that will cover the whole piece. Gently crinkle it up, then flatten it back out and lay it on top of the wood. Smooth it out as best as possible (this is much more important than I realized for what I was trying to accomplish). Once its on there and all smoothed out, add another layer of Modge Podge, then let it dry. This is what it should look like...
After it's dry, you're going to want to use the black paint. I only had acrylic paint, so I added a good amount of water to make it more of a wash.
You are going to want to apply a thin layer of paint, it doesn't even need to be fully covered. Immediately rub the paint off. It will leave black accents of the ripples of the tin foil, make it a bit darker, and just give it an aged metallic feel.
You can basically do this idea on anything. I saw it done on a night stand, and it was beautiful. I figured before I ever attempted to try that, I might want to work on a much smaller scale. After I did all this, I cut out the silhouettes, and needed to apply them. This was the big error or the night, that I actually ended up giving up on for tonight. I am too tired to keep brainstorming and trying different ideas right now. I kind of feel like I am now working on autopilot. The transparent film actually ended up being a horrible idea. The second the Modge Podge was applied it curled up ridiculously fast, so I had to carefully peel it apart. Once I applied it, I realized the film is so thin that all the little crinkles on the tinfoil make the silhouette look horrible!!! Big fail. I tried to do it a little differently on another one, and it came out even worse. So here it is, the big fail of the day...
Ah! I hate to even post this. Just looking at it makes me instantly cringe. Then again, what would art or even life be without some errors. Now I absolutely know never to use the film again on a project like this. Tomorrow is my 'lazy day' of the week, so I will start working on it much earlier, with a refreshed brain. I'm thinking I might end up using bristol board. Which is just a very thick, nicer piece of paper. Hopefully, that will work, but I guess we will see tomorrow. I feel like today I was kind of rushing on this project, even though I worked on it for several hours. I'm just so excited to have it all finished and up on the wall. If you want something perfect though, and the way you really want it, rushing is definitely not a good idea. Tomorrow I will take my time and work really hard, and maybe by the end of the night they will all be finished, and up on my wall. One can only hope!
Ok, little update...
I posted this about an hour ago. I was about to go to bed, but the project perfectionist in me was going crazy!!! I knew there was absolutely no way I could ever fall asleep knowing how horrible that looked. So, I got out my bristol board and reprinted the silhouettes. I originally was going to just Modge Podge it onto of the horrible looking one, but one of the edges was up a little bit so I of course had to pick at it a bit. The layer of dried Modge Podge was thick enough that I could actually just peel it off, so I did that for the two that I messed up on, and I was back at a clean piece of tin foil. Yes, that means I need to redo the Modge Podge and paint, but that is absolutely fine by me. I used one of the other ovals to mount the silhouette on, added the Modge Podge to the back of it, and since it's so much thicker it didn't curl up. I was able to put it right on, with no problem, and no crinkles in it!!! I can finally go to sleep, and be at peace for tonight!
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