Are you familiar with Decoupage? It’s simply the art of decorating objects with paper cut-outs. In card making, it usually means layering the same picture with slightly less of the image each time, so you get certain details raised off the card more than others – here’s
one example and
here’s another.
In crafts however, there’s a new take on decoupage called decopatch. It’s described as being like papier mache. Hobbycraft sells decoupatch papers which are very thin, almost tissue-like printed papers, that you cut or tear up and stick onto wooden or cardboard objects, which they also sell. They have words, letters and animals – all sorts of things including photo frames and pretty little trays which you could decorate to match someone’s bedroom or living room décor.
Some time ago in the sale I bought my initial and that of my now-husband and an ampersand sign. I realised a few months back that these were still untouched in my craft cupboard and I thought they would look really nice at our wedding. You can buy large decorative letters of your initials or Mr & Mrs, or even hire 6ft-high illuminated letters – which look great but the latter cost a couple of hundred of pounds to hire and we’ve decided to spend our money on other things.
We decided not to decorate the room where we are having the band (and a few other things – we spent our ‘frivolous’ money on something else!) with flowers, as it will be late and dark when everyone is in that room. But there are a couple of mantelpieces where I realised these letters would look really good.
I bought some cowprint decopatch paper at the same time as the letters which is particularly appropriate for the wedding as we had a bit of a cow theme (as my last name is now Cowe!). I didn’t realise though that you are supposed to use a special glue to stick on the paper, which dries clear and gives a sort of varnish effect. I used Pritt-Stick which worked fine but gives the letters a matt rather than gloss effect. It took a bit of time but was quite simple as I just cut strips of the paper and stuck it over the letters – some of the curves were a bit harder to do but overall I was quite pleased with it.
