A Graduation Gift

I am all about being crafty and I LOVE to use my crafty skills to make special gifts for those I love. A long time family friend recently graduated from high school and I got her a cool Vera Bradley ID key ring to take to school, but I wanted to give her something cool for her dorm room. I decided to take my favorite poem, Dream Big, and put it on a round wooden piece to hang in her room. I forgot to take before photos, but here's how I made it.

Step 1: Cover the wooden piece with decoupage glue. I used Aleene's Collage Pauge, by Traci Bautista, in glossy finish.

Step 2: Carefully lay the piece onto a piece of tissue paper in a solid color. I used red. Then use your fingers to carefully pat the tissue paper onto the wood.

Step 3: Carefully, brush on a second coat of the Collage Pauge.

Step 4: Lay a second piece of tissue paper. For a little variety, I used a white with black polka dots sheet. Then again, use your fingers to carefully pat the tissue paper down.

Step 5: (the trickiest step) Cut out a small piece of tissue paper and lay it on a piece of printer paper. Make sure the tissue paper is smooth agains the paper and carefully, tape all of the edges of the tissue paper to the paper. Place it in your printer and print of the image or poem you want on your piece.

Step 6: Cut out the image or poem from the paper, make sure you don't have a lot of empty edges, in other words, cut it close to the image or poem.

Step 7: Carefully, brush on another coat of the Collage Pauge to the wooden piece.

Step 8: Carefully lay to image or poem onto the piece and lightly tap it onto the pauge. You have to do this very soft, you don't want to smudge the ink of the image or poem.

Step 9: Let this dry a bit, then using a brush dipped in the pauge, carefully tap the brush onto the edges of the image or poem so they "blend" into the other layers.

Step 10: Let dry and then attach a ribbon to the back to hang it.

And here you have it....