Do You Decopatch?

And now the moment you've all been waiting for . That paint spattered old chair that I found abandoned when we moved into the new premises is now a thing of beauty and takes pride of place in my window display (you can sit on it too LOL). It took SIX hours to decopatch the chair - not because it was difficult but simply because of the huge surface area. Each of those slats on the chair back had to be covered and thats a lot of little corners to get into!

I used just two different patterns - the pastel stripe showing to the left of the picture and a lilac paper with a tiny floral print. It's not necessary to sand the wood first (which is great because I'm basically lazy - that's the bit that puts me off altering with paint) and I didn't remove the paint spatters either (although there were two 1" areas that I covered with a second layer of paper).

I have recently got into decopatch in a big way & it's like scrapbooking in that you start to look at things in a completely different way. With scrapbooking, clothes for my little boy that I'll buy because they have cute buttons or an embroidered image, take on a new light when I'm thinking '& when he grows out of it those buttons/pockets/patches will make a great embellishment'. I have been known to photocopy a t-shirt if I can't wait for him to grow LOL. With decopatch I'm looking at a scruffy door, chipped vase, unusual shaped bottle or whatever & thinking 'I could decopatch that!' It's also like scrapbooking in that I'll go to the £1 store and see all these hideous things that would look great altered as well as all the tinned travel games (pieces for embellishments, tins for mini albums) so now I have to be even more ruthless about what I buy - sure, it's only £1 - but when you buy 10, 20 or more items it can add up to bankruptcy before you blink.

Having said that - check out this lizard. There are two settled at the base of the chair in the window. This one was decorated with a great African inspired collage paper and the other with red roses, which when collaged in small pieces takes on an excellent gothic red/black. I used small faceted black beads for the eyes, which were glued in place with Artsy Collage Ultimate Glue (by HOTP)

It's hard to believe that they started out as the most hideous metallised plastic wall decorations LOL. If you'd like to see more of my recent decopatch creations have a look here!