Decoupage Diva

Part of my new found crafting includes finding out that I'm really good at decoupage. I kinda stumbled upon it on accident as I was searching for switch plate covers for my home. My home has a low voltage wiring system (popular in the 50s) that has these funky switch plate covers--not sold in store. And, these cheap plastic vanilla colored cover plates all over my house looked horrible in a freshly painted, updated room. So, I took to the internet and found a solution. From that project, I've become a decoupage diva and I will post those projects in upcoming blogs. (Just wait until you see my desk makeover!)


But on to the variations of my "welcome" wreath. 

My boss also lives on the shores of Lake Erie so I thought she too would enjoy the umbrella drink wreath. This too cost under $10.00. Using plain white initial lettering (found in any craft store for $2.00-$3.00) I decoupaged the front of it using a shell background pattern I found in my Microsoft word templates. If you don't know how to decoupage I highly suggest that you check out http://www.modpodgerocksblog.com/ Not only does it contain great how-to guides, tips and videos, there are some great projects too! Then using a glue gun and some left over shells and sea glass to give it dimension.

Attaching the "M" to the center of the wreath was a little tricky because it was just slightly smaller than the wreath (plus grapevine wreaths are never perfect!). So I used some eyelet screws on the top of the letters and wire and then attached with twine and wire which the umbrellas covered up and then I reinforced the bottom of the lettering using a glue gun.

For this particular wreath I needed to trim many of the wooden toothpicks on the umbrellas as they were too long. (again no two grapvine wreaths are created equal!) I found a wire cutter works better than scissors which tended to shred the wood. 

I repeated this same process to create another wreath using the letter "B". Instead of shells, I used Star Fish (also left over from another project). While these looked great in the wreaths, I could see them acting as stand alone wall pieces.