A Date With Decoupage

First off, I know the name is uber cringey but I was thinking of what to call this post and it was the first thing that popped into my head. Plus, it has a nice ring to it. Anyway. A couple of weeks back I decided that since I was taking a couple new creative subjects at college (when I start in September! Eep!), I wanted to try and be more creative myself at home. As well as learning things like graphic and web design, I'm determined to become more skilled in physical creativity and art. Which means only one thing, a trip to Hobbycraft.

Luckily for me I have a craft savvy Mum who was happy to take a trip down to our local retail park and offer some guidance on what to buy. I knew I wanted to try out decoupage first as I'd seen pieces of decoupage other people had done on display in Hobbycraft stores. Decoupage put simply (cause thats the only way I can describe it), is taking light/thin papers (which are usually covered in a pattern or colour etc.), and then using glue to apply it something. A lot of the work others had done that I'd seen were of sculptures made out of polystyrene or cardboard that you can buy at Hobbycraft, which had then been decorated with gorgeous decoupage papers (there was a bulldog covered in the British flag!!). I loved how these looked and saw it as a great way to start off in the world of crafting. After unleashing my inner shopaholic and dashing around the shop grabbing everything, I finally managed to make it to the area of the store that actually sold all the decoupage stuff.

I was delighted to see that there was a whole range of blank items that were ideal for decoupage. In the end I settled with getting just a blank A4 notebook (I love stationary and have a mountain of notebooks at home) so that I could try it out to see if I liked it first. There was also a very convenient offer on which got me 3 decoupage paper packs for the price of 2 - not bad eh?

I decided to take some snaps on my phone of the process so that you could see how it started, developed, and what the finished product looks like.

 

Although this is the finished product, it still has quite a bit of glue on it so trust me it looks a lot better in person

What do you think? My Mum and I brainstormed, resulting in the plan of creating a broken, patchwork border with a center filled with thick strips of each pattern on a slant. I'm really pleased with how it's come out and I can't wait to start using it! I was thinking about making this my blogging book? All I had to do was rip up bits of the decoupage paper and then use a paint brush to apply some PVA glue to the area that I wanted it to go on. Then, I could make sure it was stuck down properly and stop any loose bits ripping off, by brushing over the entire top of everything with PVA glue once again. Since the papers so thin this makes the all the paper stick down extra well. My favourite paper has got to be the mosaic. It's just so colourful and simple but has such a big impact - I love it!

Also, later on in the evening, I sat down at the table to do my German homework but decided my time would be 'better spent', distracting myself by decoupaging the entire front cover of my German folder using the scraps/leftovers that I had from earlier ;D

Doing decoupage was really fun and I enjoyed every part of it. I'm definitely going to be returning to Hobbycraft soon with the hope of buying some file holders (for my desk) and more notebooks (they're really cheap and I can fill the file holders up with them) which I'll decoupage in lots of different prints. If your thinking about trying a bit of crafting or creativity out yourself, this is perfect! It's something you can do by yourself or with friends/family, it's not expensive, it doesn't require a lot of skill or equipment, it's easy and doesn't take up a lot of your time, and you'll create an amazing product that's personal to you!

Now that I know how to do this I'm gonna try and put my newlyfound crafting skills into practise more often. The idea of being able to make things around the house or my room more personal to me and look how I want is amazing! Something like a notebook which you'll use everyday is ideal for this kind of thing cause you can use your favourite prints, you could print out images of things that mean a lot to you (family, friends, places etc.), you could do loads to make it that more special!

What do you think of my decoupage'd book and file? Have you ever tried decoupage? Do you think you'll have a go at it?