Memories of Mexico, Part 1 - Mixed Media Ornament

I was inspired to make this by an article in the latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors.  In the article they made round collaged ornaments on paper mache ornament blanks; I wanted to do a mixed media-type of ornament on the same type of blanks.  But Michaels didn't have any when I went there, so I went a slightly different route.

I started with a package of four, thin, wooden oval shapes, like this one:

 My dad very kindly drilled holes in all of them for me.  I started working on the back first, painting it with two thin coats of light blue acrylic paint, letting my oval dry between coats.  Then I added two washes of dark blue water colour paint to give a watery effect.  Next, I printed clear labels with my Dymo labeller and pasted them on the back.  Finally, I finished off with two coats of Mod Podge to seal it.  Unfortunately, you can't really see the watery effect in this picture, but believe me when I say it looks really nice! Here's the end result of all that:

 

To do the front, I started off by "painting" the surface of my ornament with clear-drying Elmer's glue and gluing it to the back of a piece of Creative Memories water-print patterned paper.  I turned it over and smoothed the wrinkles out of it, and then set a couple of cookbooks on top of it and left to dry for a few days.  The weight of the cookbooks really helped smooth out the remaining wrinkles.  The next step was a wash of dark blue watercolour paint and two washes of dark teal watercolour paint to give the blue-green look of Caribbean water.  I did sort of a hit-and-miss approach with the watercolours so that they blended together.  Then I put on two coats of Mod Podge to seal the paint.  Then it was time to decorate! I started by gluing teal braid made from embroidery around the edge of my ornament using Krazy Glue (the kind my dad has comes in a bottle with a nifty little brush that was perfect for this task).  Next I glued on the shells and the metal word charm.  The final step was a hanging loop made with clear beading thread.  Here's the finished product:

 

As with most of my art projects, it doesn't look anything like my initial vision, but I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! I have three ovals left, and I can't wait to make some more ornaments!

 

Jen