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
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