Have you seen decoupage on furniture but not sure where to start? In this blog I give a quick overview on how to use rice decoupage paper from Dixie Belle Paint.
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Product list:
Rice decoupage paper
Satin Clear Coat
Gator Hide
The first thing you need to do is choose your medium for decoupage. There are lots of different things you can decoupage with but I am going to tell you about the rice decoupage paper from Dixie Belle for this particular example.
You all remember this piece?
This was a commission that I created for my friend. If you'd like to read how it was done you can do so here.
To accompany this piece, we chose 'Feathers' design - the colours in this paper work beautifully with what we already had on the outside. My friend also loves feathers so this tied in nicely and also links to the 'Boho Soul' transfer that was used on the front.
The individual feathers were cut out and removed from the white background. The reason for this is because I wanted to stick them directly onto the wooden drawer sides and didn't want any of the white to show. You can achieve different looks depending on the sticking medium used. I did examples of both to show the different effects.
In this example, I used Satin Clear Coat as the sticking medium. You can see that the feather and the background are very much the same as before it was stuck down - the colours are true and the white background is visible.
In the above example, Gator Hide was used as the sticking medium. This makes the paper much more transparent and reveals whats underneath the paper a lot more. This option works well over a painted surface. The
Parrot Cabinet makeover I did used this method with Gator Hide as I had painted the panel I planned to decoupage in a white base coat.
This is a side by side comparison of how using Gator Hide vs Clear Coat resuklts in. a totally different look. The Clear Coat example is on top and the Gator Hide is the bottom. (The white strands you can see in the bottom image are actually fibres from the rice paper so another factor to bare in mind when deciding which methos to use!)
As I mentioned before, I knew I wanted to use Clear Coat for my project as the rice paper was being applied over a wooden drawer side. I applied a thin layer of clear coat over the area where the feathers were going to be placed.
Top tip! Don't use too much sticking medium as this causes wrinkles!
Next I positioned the feathers on the drawer side.
Then I applied another layer of Clear Coat over the top of the feathers. This does make the rice paper a little see through but don't worry, this transparency goes away once the Clear Coat dries.
Once the Clear Coat had dried, I added another layer of Clear Coat across the entire drawer side and set aside to dry.
That's it!! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Here's a close up of the finished piece. I love how the colours of the feathers tie in with the colours on the rest of the piece.
I hope this has been useful to you and you are raring to tackle decoupage!
Con x
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