I'm in the process of redecorating my house and have a million project ideas swirling around in my head. I FINALLY got one of them done and am so excited about it. In this tutorial I will show you how I did it.
To start, go to your local home improvement store and pick up some 1/4 inch underlayment or MDF. I had my dear, sweet husband cut the underlayment into 8 inch sections for me (3 sections for each picture). If you use underlayment like I did, make sure you sand the edges before you bust out the paint, because that stuff splinters like mad!
I wanted my pictures to have a shabby feel, so I applied several coats of paint, which meant LOTS of drying time. First, I busted out the black spray paint. Lucky for me, spray paint dries pretty fast, so after about 10 minutes I applied several coats of white paint, and then I waited... I used white because that is the color I wanted my branches and birds to be.
Once the white paint (or whatever color you want your image to be) has dried, I applied my vinyl. I used
Birds On A Branch from the Silhouette online store. I added a couple of extra birds so that each panel would have a little visual interest. I probably, for the sake of this tutorial, should have used a different color of vinyl so it would show up a little better in the picture, but white is what I had the most of, so its what got used. I painted a thin coat of white paint over the vinyl to seal it to make sure that I got nice clean lines, and then I waited some more....
The next step is by far the messiest. To get the perfect shabby distressed look I use Vaseline. Yep, Vaseline. Apply it to any spot that you want the underneath paint color to show through. I used my finger and applied it to the edges and random spots throughout each panel. (Sorry, no photo...my fingers were greasy). Once I was finished with the Vasleline I busted out the aqua paint. I ended up mixing the color myself so I would have enough of the same color to paint all 6 panels the same color. I mixed Apple Barrel craft paints in White, Spring Green, and Regency Blue until it was the color I wanted. I ended up applying two coats of aqua paint, and you got it, I waited...
Now comes the fun part, no more waiting! After the layers and layers of paint finally dried, I started peeling off the vinyl to reveal my perfect little birdies. That's when I really started to get excited. I got even more excited when I started to shabby everything up with sandpaper. I used coarse sandpaper and sanded the edges where I applied the Vaseline. The paint just kind of peels off where the Vaseline was. It makes a mess, and uses lots of sandpaper, but it sure is fun!
As a final touch I used some texture cream from
Poppy Seed Projects. This is the first time I've used it so I was interested to see just how it would turn out. I dropped blobs of it on each panel and spread it around with a foam brush and then "painted" overlapping figure eights into the cream. And then...you got it, waited for it to dry.
According to Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part, and I TOTALLY agree. At least while I waited I had plenty of time to figure out just how to hang my new art on the wall. Here's what I came up with:
I cut pieces of 1x2 into seven inch pieces and glued them to both the top and bottom of each panel. Once again, I got to wait for something to dry. If I had it to do over again, I would probably do this before I painted. I was worried that I was going to mar the pictures, but I guess that would just add to the distressed finish, right? Once the glue dried, I nailed picture hangers to the 1x2 on the top and started hanging pictures. I usually screw the hangers in for added strength, but these pictures are so light weight the nails should work just fine.
Sorry for the horrible pictures, some day I will own a decent camera. I am so excited about how they turned out and am already trying to figure out what other room in my house needs some new art!
