just paint it white: coins

Friday, 27 April 2012

decoupaged tray

I've finally finished one of my 'unfinished projects'.

I think one of my favourite crafts is decoupage and I used to do quite a lot.
These are just a few.

I don't remember where the shells came from, but the 'brown' kitchen things were actually from a paper bag.

I sometimes gilded the tops of the insides and the handles, then used a crackle glaze or antiqued them.

I often found the best things to decoupage from wrapping paper, as with these great fruit pictures.
I did a lot of gilding then as well !

As you all know - blogland provides an almost infinite source of things to decoupage and for a long time I had admired the lovely graphics and layering techniques of other bloggers.

When I found this tray for £2, I had the perfect piece to try out my idea. I wanted a tray to look as though I just thrown things on it. Sort of like an in-tray that has stuff waiting to be sorted out !

And it would be so great if I could show you the before shot, but I can't find it anywhere - sorry. The tray was a pale yellow with a floral picture stuck in the middle.

So the after shot - I painted it with a few layers of cream paint, then after sticking everything down and varnishing, I rubbed in raw umber artists oil colour, to age.

The plain postcards on the right are from Knick of Time Interiors

The letter and the french postcard are from the The Graphics Fairy

The stamps are real - my brother and I collected them for a while. Not that we had a clue what we were doing, so hopefully they're not worth anything.

The keys and coins are photocopies of actual items I have. The keys I have been collecting to frame, and the coins are not old - just left over from trips abroad. I simply laid them in the old geezer's printer and photocopied them.