Love My Messy Messy Mess: 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.