Mod Podge Madness

I don’t remember exactly when my obsession with mod podge started, but the first time I remember doing it was at my 7 year old flower birthday party when we covered cardboard boxes with magazine clippings of flowers.  Since then, I have mod podged everything from picture frames to planners to canvasses to bikes!

Here is the bike I mod podged.  It actually is the second bike I did because the first one was stolen right off the back porch by a homeless person which I guess I should take as a compliment. Everyone on campus knew my bike and sometimes I would even be introduced as the girl with the mod podge bike.

So for those of you who are still in the dark and wondering what mod podge is, it is a glue-water mixture that you paint on anything from magazine clippings to newspaper to photos that allows you to attach them to virtually any surface.  It then dries clear with either a matte, antique or glazed finish depending on what type you buy (I like matte the best). 

Getting the scraps ready.

My friend Katie, her sister Stephanie, and I decided to get painting canvases and create a picture from magazine clippings on them.  Well we ended up changing our minds and not quite making a picture but our art projects still turned out adorable and will be great decorations in our rooms at school.  I stuck with beige tones for the background and created and oak tree from chocolate brown scraps.  Katie used green and blue tones to create grass and sky which she topped with a pink and orange peace sign.  Steph just had her senior ball so she did a colorful background and then is mod podging some pictures from the night on top of it.

Katie and Steph's canvases.

My board.

Katie and I also decided to add a quote to our canvasses.  We typed our quotes up and then printed them on normal paper.  While we were doing this we soaked a tea bag in water and then when we were ready, dragged it over the pieces of paper our quotes were on to stain them brown.  After letting it dry for 30 minutes, we burnt the edges of the paper to give it an aged look and then covered it with mod podge and attached it to our boards.

The paper was a little too wet to burn right away.

Eventually it caught on fire.

Beware the ashes and tea bag make a bit of a mess.

Since you probably could not see the quotes we chose I thought I would type them for you.

Katie's quote:  "When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."

My quote:  "If you don't go after what you want, you will never have it.  If you don't ask, the answer is always no.  If you don't step forward, you are always in the same place."

My oak tree kind of matches the oak tree on the hill behind my house. 

You can see it if you look close enough.

Not only was this a fun craft, but also pretty cheap considering the canvasses were only $2.99 each, the foam brushes $.59 each, and the mod podge $8.99 for a bottle that we used less than a quarter of!