How to Decoupage

We have some really eye catching napkins on the website that I really wanted to use but as I never quite get round to having the tea parties I dreamed of in the summerhouse I thought I would use them to decoupage some plain plant pots.  Decoupage – a word to strike terror into the heart of the clumsy and impatient – as I am.  But I’ve found a cheats way of doing it is to match the background of the item to be decoupaged to the design you are cutting out.  So here’s my cheats guide how to decoupage!

I have a collection of white pots that came with orchids as gifts over the years and felt they could do with a bit of oomph – I’m never one to leave things alone and of course why have plain white when you can have an exuberance of colour and pattern?  Some would say too much but each to our own.  As the background colour of our lovely napkins is black I painted a couple of pots black, one spray painted and one with chalk paint, which gives slightly different effects, not that it’s really noticeable once you have decoupaged the item.

By using the same background colour it meant I could include some of the twirling flower tendrils as I didn’t need to cut into them, I just cut round them and the black of the napkin merged onto the pot colour.  Also I didn’t need to be so precise cutting out the rest of the pieces.  Before glueing the pieces on I used tiny pieces of blue tack to plan out the design so I could get a rough idea of how I wanted it.  I used Mod Podge, which is a glue and final varnish in one and just brushed it onto the pot in the area the design was going to be and then carefully brushed on the pieces, getting out air bubbles and glueing down stray bits.  After letting it dry for an hour or so I brushed over the whole plant pot with a layer of Mod Podge as a varnish to protect the decoupage.

Buoyed up by my success and whilst I was making a mess I carried on and spray painted a white plant pot yellow with PlastiKote and then used some really pretty yellow napkins.  I am really pleased with the results and think the plant pots are quite striking now.  What do you think?  Hopefully you can see that decoupage needn’t be as fiddly as you might think and that my how to guide has given you some tips.

The possibilities for decoupage are endless although too much and your home would look like some crafting nightmare.  I decoupaged a chair a couple of years ago using fabric and love the results.  It could become quite addictive but the garden is calling to me again and in need of some staking, deadheading, weeding and endless other jobs which seem to materialise overnight.

Jacqui x

How to Decoupage- By Jacqui Brooks

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