Pressed Flower Door Tag

 A couple of months ago, my daughter and I checked out the First Nature Activity Book from the library. This book is full of great projects for kids. My daughter really wanted to make bird feeders, but May didn't seem quite like the time of year for that project, so we did pressed flowers instead. I also looked at this very informative and helpful website for beginners. It has all kinds of fascinating information about pressing flowers and pressed flower projects. We picked some blooms from the flowerbeds around our house, I dusted off my Critical Theory book from an undergrad English course, and we inserted some sheets of newspaper in the middle of the book, placed the flowers on the newspaper sheets, shut the book, and piled all the other books I haven't opened since college on top of the Critical Theory book and waited a month. When we opened the book at the beginning of July, the flowers had pressed beautifully, but what to do with them?
Again, I looked to the world wide web for help and found a great tutorial about making pressed flower book markers. One of the steps in making these beautiful book markers was sewing. I don't do that....ever. Plus, because I'm cheap, I wanted to just use things I had around the house to experiment with pressed flower art before I dumped a load of money into any project concerning pressed flowers. Thus, the project that started as a book marker and turned into a door tag.

Here is what I did:

1. I got a sheet of wax paper, then arranged my flowers on top of the wax paper (shiny side up).

2. I separated a two-ply tissue and put one of the sheets over the pressed flowers.

3. I then took a paint brush and used the brush to very carefully "paint" Mod Podge matte glue over the tissue. I painted over the flower area first and then covered the whole tissue with glue so the entire tissue was sealed to the wax paper. I was careful not to rip the tissue.

4. I let the wax paper, flowers, and tissue dry overnight.

5. I got a piece of cream colored card stock and glued the wax paper to the card stock with acid free glue (the kind used for scrapbooking).

6. I let that dry for several hours.

7. When I was sure the glue was dried, I used a measuring tape to create straight lines on either side of my design and cut out the "book marker" shape.

8. I discovered the card stock that I'd used was not sturdy enough to make the design stiff enough to function as a book marker so I changed my plan. I had some adhesive mounting board left over from another project so I cut that to size and used it as backing for my design. Now the design was definitely too thick to be a book marker. Book marker idea is toast.

9. As I mentioned above, the tutorial I was looking at for my inspiration mentioned sewing as a step to hold the wax paper design and card stock together. Since I don't do that...ever, I decided to get some twine and a hole punch and lace the design together. I started at the bottom middle and laced up each side, then laced the top, and tied the twine together, top middle, to create a hanger for the design.

10. I then added scraps of card stock paper to give the design more interest.

11. The sides of the door tag seemed rough and unfinished so I wrapped twine around the edges and used my finger to Mod Podge the twine to the edges of the door tag.

12. I stenciled the words onto leftover bits of the wax paper/card stock, cut them out, and used acid free glue to place them on the door tag nee book marker.

13. As the last step, to make sure the design held together, I sprayed the whole thing with a coat of clear glaze.

Overall, I was satisfied with the result, but there are a couple of things I would do differently. If I make something similar, I will wrap the mounting board in brown kraft paper and then glue the design to the kraft paper on the mounting board to give the whole thing a more finished look. I will also experiment with stenciling the words onto the card stock and then gluing the tissue over the words instead of stenciling them on top of the tissue and glue.

Inspiration is such an interesting thing. I was inspired by the tutorial I saw, but my project turned out nothing like what was on the tutorial. (Hers was much prettier. Check it out!) However, that's the fun part of creating something---just going with the flow and seeing where creativity and inspiration take you. If you've read through all this, I hope you'll be inspired to try some pressed flower art of your own and see where it leads you. Maybe you'll become a world renown purveyor of all things pressed flowers, or maybe you'll just create something you really love that makes you happy when you look at it.

 

DIY Initial Sign

 I've been looking around for some  metal wall art or a sign...or something...to spice up my front porch for quite a while. I wasn't having any luck finding anything I liked...that was in my price range....well my husband's price range. Then my dogs broke a board on the back fence and it gave me a fantastic idea. When life gives you destructive animals, use deconstruction. (We'll pretend my sign qualifies as deconstructed art.)

1. First my husband stained the board for me. Very nice of him. After the stain dried, I measured it and cut it roughly in half so the boards were the same length.

2. I bought a 2 and 1/4" in. x 36 in. baltic birch strip and a 9 1/2" wood letter at Hobby Lobby.

3. I cut the two pieces of the strip thing to the width of the boards and then tacked one strip onto the boards with finish nails, about 3 inches from the top, to hold the boards together. I did the same about 3 inches from the bottom ( put 2 nails at the top and bottom of the strip on both edges and then tacked it to the boards towards the middle as well).

4. I painted the wood letter with a coat of brown acrylic craft paint and let it dry. Then I spray painted the wood letter "almond". I let the spray paint dry and then distressed the letter with sand paper. If you don't know what distressing is there are lost of great tutorials out there that tell you more than you ever need to know about it. I looked at this blog post on Serendipity Chic Design, this tutorial on the HGTV website and this tutorial from Motiva Beaucoup (fair warning: this one has some language so don't look if you don't like). I didn't wait long enough for the paint to dry so the paint was kind of tacky while I was sanding. I'd let it dry for 4 or 5 hours at least before sanding. I think I waited 1 hour.

5. After completing the distressing of the initial letter, I tacked it approximately on the middle front of the sign with finish nails.

6. The final step was to get a piece of  thin wire that was easy to twist and tack the wire on the back of the sign, about an inch from the top on either side, with finish nails. Before I hammered the nails all the way in, I twisted the wire in a loop around the head several times and then hammered the nail in to hold the wire in place.

I'd say it came out pretty good. It gave my front porch the finishing touch it needed for next to nothing in cost. The whole project took maybe 3 or 4 hours with drying time for the paint. And yes, my yard does need to be mowed. Thanks for noticing.