Beginner Friendly Decoupaged Ornaments Using Napkins, Glue And Chalk Paint

My relaxation during the holiday season involves personalizing gifts and making them myself. This can prove to be time consuming but by keeping them easy and giving them some consideration ahead of time, these crafts and smaller projects have become one of my biggest stress relievers. This project requires little skill and a few affordable materials.

One of the things I look for when the holiday season starts are assorted shapes of wood ornaments.

These bell shapes are one of two I came across this year at Michael’s. These are approximately 4″ x 2 1/2″ which is a size I enjoy working with. They aren’t to small where the picture your applying to them is hard to see yet they aren’t to big to put on Christmas trees. The other shape I decided to pick up will be shown a bit later in the blog. I use the same technique on both shapes.

These are the adorable winter napkins I found on Etsy. 

The other essentials to complete this project were decoupage glue, chalk paint and polycrylic.

 

Since the ornaments were already mostly white I applied only one coat of white chalk paint. I sped along the drying time with a hair dryer set on cool/medium.

With a soft craft brush I applied a thin layer of decoupage glue all over the surface of the ornament. I centered the portion of the napkin I wanted to be on the ornament and smoothed it over the surface of the ornament with a balled up piece of plastic wrap. Using plastic wrap helps smooth out the wrinkles and prevents the napkin from sticking to your fingers and tearing. I then spread a thin layer of glue over the top of the napkin to help seal the image.

To harden and set the glue quickly, I placed the wet ornaments into a cold oven. I set the oven to the lowest temperature, mine is 170 degrees and turned the oven heat off once the alarm sounded after the temperature had been reached. I turn the oven off, leave the oven door closed and let the items cool for up to one hour.  I try to work on my holiday items in small batches so I will dry several things at a time.

This is how the pieces looked once done and dried in the oven. The ornament surface isn’t completely smooth so the image doesn’t look as smooth as when adhered to a glass surface. The oven is the easiest and fastest way I know to set these small projects up quickly. It saves so much time.

• Just be sure when using the oven to dry your glue that your paint layers have completely dried before you start gluing the images to whatever surface you are applying them to.
• You could also apply more glue layers to the dried pieces but for this project I only applied one since I knew I would be coating these pieces with polycrylic. Decoupage glue will get reactivated if it gets wet so I topcoat my projects.

To finish off these sweet ornaments, I used hot glue and adhered some craft gems and leftover lace I already had in my stash. I did the same with the other shaped ornaments.

Here is the wine bottle I covered at the same time I worked on the ornaments. I’m so drawn to this napkin this year and find the look of it so charming. I like that the image just represents the winter season.

Thank you for stopping by and if you have any questions please reach out:)

Roni♥