Friday, April 3, 2015

Decoupage Sheet Music Bunny

Messy Messy Fail - Perhaps if you saw my Instagram yesterday, I attempted to make a few loaves of Polish placek bread for my family for Easter.  I used this recipe.  The bread ended up tasting quite delicious, however, I think I let the bread rise too much the third and final time.  The two 9" round pans and the loaf pan ended up overflowing in the oven, making a nice smoky pile on the oven floor, but they were still good!

Tidy Victory - House is pretty clean, Easter basket items are ready to be assembled, eggs are getting dyed in a little bit, now it's time for a Mommy project!




I'm embarrassed to say I have NEVER used Modge Podge before.  I had a friend in college who would make the cutest gifts using this technique with tissue paper.  I always thought it was so artsy and fun, a REAL crafty project.  

Fast forward way too many years later, I want to decoupage something.  But wait, is decoupage a noun, a verb or an adjective?  Perhaps I will just use the word in this post as all of the above!  

I have been looking around town for a cute bunny who needed an outfit change.  Finally, 6 days before Easter, there it was on the bottom seasonal shelf at Rite Aid, actually considered a garden statue (50% off woo hoo!).



I thought this bunny would be a good size for my first decoupage project - I wanted to make sure you could see the bunny's facial features so it didn't look like a rock I covered in recycled sheet music.  He had some ugly poorly glued gems on his butt that I ripped off quite easily - now he's perfect!

For this fun decoupage project, I used the following items:

newspaper (to keep goo from going on my table cloth)
bunny figure (use whatever you want)
a container of Modge Podge
a nylon brush
several pages of old sheet music (from the recycling box in my high school orchestra room)
a cotton dish towel (to dust the bunny pre podge)
bowl of water (for a quick clean up if necessary)
spool of ribbon (not too thick)
hot glue gun



And now here's what I did:

First, I gave my bunny a little dusting with a clean cotton dish towel, who knew how long that bunny was on that bottom shelf for!



Next, I tore up 3 pages of old sheet music.  I made some longer and shorter tears to make sure I had a few different sizes for whatever I needed.  I tried to make sure there was as little white paper on the tears as possible so that more music than white paper would end up on the bunny. 


Music I used included The Final Countdown, Highlights from Wicked and Joy to the World. 

Time to start decoupaging - dipped the nylon bristle brush into the Modge Podge container, brushed off the excess, and started painting it on the head of the bunny.  Grabbed a strip of torn music, placed it on the bunny and brushed more MP over the strip to adhere it to the bunny.  I used my finger to smooth out any bubbles and help the sheet music follow the contours of the figurine.  



I kept repeating this method, making sure to work in smaller areas so the MP wouldn't dry before I was able to put music strips on it.  The directions on the MP container mentioned allowing your project to dry 15-20 minutes before reapplying, so it's not like I was terribly pressed for time.  




I had to stop a time or two to wash my hands - the Modge Podge dries up on your fingers and can build up quickly - and I did not want the dried glue on my fingers to tear any of the music off of the bunny.


I won't lie, I thought my bunny looked like he was being bandaged at the hospital at this point.
After the whole bunny was covered (I did not cover the bottom, left that alone), I let it dry for an hour.  I was sure there would be some places on the bunny I missed, and sure enough there were!


Now he looks good!

I used some small tears of sheet music I had to cover the spots I missed, then I let that dry for another hour (just to be sure).

My bunny was looking super cute and super musical, but he needed one last accessory - a bow!  I had just purchased a spool of cool purple ribbon at Michael's, and I thought it would be perfect for my bunny.  So I plugged in my hot glue gun, tied a cute bow and glued it under my bunny's chin with a dot of glue.





I'm so excited for my decoupage sheet music bunny - by the way there are NO decoupage sheet music figures on Pinterest so I declare this project ORIGINAL!  I saw a few posts for decoupage music eggs, perhaps next year.



Do you like to decoupage anything?



This bunny sure does!


And new Easter Jams to boot, woo hoo!

Happy Easter everyone, enjoy the holiday with the ones you love!


Katie


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