Princess Crown Wooden Sign

A fellow cleft mum has been having a hard time of things lately and her little girl recently went through her palate repair operation. Through all the difficulties she is facing she continues to work for clapa in her fundraising efforts and has applied to become a contact parent for clapa, which means she will act as a point of contact for new/ other cleft parents that may need help with their babies. I thought she could do with a few bits to cheer her up so I made this little Crown Wooden Sign for her daughter.

Both the Crown shape and letters were bought from my favourite craft shape supplier LaserSmith. The heart was bought off ebay as bulk buy of 50, and the small stars were bought as a mixed box of embellishments from hobbycraft.

I started by placing my bits on the plaque to check they fit and see how they looked best. I planned to paint it with my Kobra spray paint in pink.

I always spray both sides of the plaque-even when the back is unlikely to be seen. I think it looks more professional. I ordered some items from some established crafty pages off facebook and was really disappointed when they arrived and were only painted on the embellished side. Especially as it was an item where the back could be seen, I.e. on a freestanding shape! You MUST make sure it is thoroughly dry before attempting to paint the other side though. If you have sprayed a thick coat (as I always end up doing because I'm too inpatient) I recommend waiting a good few hours before turning around to spray the back. However, it is a better recommendation to use the spray paint as instructed on the tin and just do several thin coats as it dries much quicker this way.

I glued the embellishments in place using superglue (I have found this gives a much better finish that a hot glue gun as it doesn't ooze out of the sides and it sticks well without the need to clamp it together for half an hour after gluing - can you tell I am impatient?)And those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that there have been holes drilled into 2 of the crowns peaks. To do this I used my Dremel 3000 (see, it was an essential buy afterall :o)!)

So that my lovely CLAPA friend knew why the devil she was receiving this gift I also made her a card...

I would like to enter this card into the One Stop Craft Challenge Challenge #238 - Pastel Colours

It was a pig to try to photograph this card. I love the design, but again I am disappointed with the stamped sentiment, which reads 'THINKING OF YOU'..... YOU NEED NEW INK PADS :o)

Decorating wooden plaques using Decal Paper

So, I've said in a previous blog that my writing on wooden plaques isn't brilliant and that I would be trying different methods to be able to offer a more professional finish.

Cue the decal paper method...

I love my quotes, but I want to be able to present them in an eye catching style. Decal paper is bascially an image transfer paper. It works a little bit like those tattoos you used as a kid. It is perfect for decorating wooden plaques, especially as I would be able to include a picture.... I just needed to master its use...........!

I searched my quotes board on Pinterest and decided to use a quote by Marilyn Monroe. I then search for a black and white image of her on google images. I decided to use my 100mm x 100mm square plaque so using Microsoft publisher I drew a box 100mm x100mm (this was simply to use as a guide for positioning my image and text - I deleted it before printing as I didn't want it to appear on my printed image). I positioned my image, wrote my text, altered the font and size and faffed and fiddled with the layout. When I was happy with how it looked I copied the entire image and pasted it into Paint where I flipped the image so It was back to front (otherwise when the image was transferred the writing would be the wrong way round). Then I printed it according the instructions that came with the decal paper (different brands of decal paper work differently so I won't attempt to give instructions on this). I am reliably informed that I could have just changed my printer settings to print  "mirrored", but my IT skills are a little basic and this was the easiest way for me to do it.

I painted my plaque with my Kobra spray paint in a very pale pink and set about transferring the image. Really I should have photographed the process to explain exactly how the decal transfer worked, but a) I didn't know I'd get it to work, and b) I would rather say I use "x" brand of decal paper and this is how it works.

Incidententally I used dry rub decal paper here. There is also waterslife decal paper which involves wetting the transfer image. I tried the water slide decal paper first (as its cheaper) and failed miserably. It seems like the easier option as you simply print, spray with an acrylic varnish a couple of times, wet, then apply the image. However, when I tried I mustn't have sprayed the image with enough varnish as the ink ran when I placed it in water and it was unusable. It might be worth trying laserjet printed images rather than inkjet-something else to try!

Dry rub decal paper involved a series and sticking and peeling films and rubbing out air bubbles. I found a few bubbles in the final product-but I'm sure ill get better at it and figure out how to avoid the bubbles. I was disappointed in this method as I'd hoped for a flawless transfer, whereby it looked like the image/text had been painted directly on to the wooden plaque, but when you look closely it looks a giant sticker. The other image I have ready to try doesn't go right the edge so it may be that I just need to be more clever about the design.

Anyway, here is the final product. I plan to put my dremel to good use and drill holes to make this a hanging plaque...