Wall Plaque Made over With Rice Paper And Hooks

Spring is around the corner and I assembled another wall plaque for a relative who will be setting up a new home space for themselves. This one is very different then the other one I just blogged about. The rice paper I used screams summer/spring and nice weather. It has a beautiful floral that includes tree branches, a birdcage and a bird outside the cage. 

I used another of the wood plaques I had purchased from the craft store that already had the string to hang it with attached. This is a very light piece of wood so the string alone was sufficient. 

I gave the surface a nice smooth coat of white acrylic paint with this paint brush also made by Folk Art. It is recommended to get a very smooth undercoat on your craft projects and it does. I have used it on wood and bottles and I love the finish when using acrylic paint.

Once the paint had dried, I centered my rice paper over the wood. When the position looked good, I like to hold the paper in place with my one hand and lift and glue one section at a time. I use this method on pieces that are  bit larger so the decoupage glue doesn’t dry before I place my paper down on to the surface. I also like to smooth my picture down using a small ball of plastic wrap or even a dry Handi Wipe cloth. This pushes all the air bubbles out without tearing the paper. There are other methods of doing this but this is the way I use the most. I will use the same piece numerous times on as many projects as I can, unless the piece gets dirty or wet, to keep waste at a minimum.

Routinely I bake whatever I’m working on as long as it fits into the oven to help smooth out any wrinkles that may have occurred and speed the drying time of the glue. The piece is placed in a cold oven and set to the lowest setting. Once the heat is reached the oven is shut off and the piece dries anywhere from 1/2 to 1 hour in the oven. One of my favorite things when decoupaging is seeing how my piece looks once the baking process is complete.

I went around the edges of the plaque with a 120 grit sandpaper to get rid of the excess paper. A finer grit would have also worked. I just used what I had. This is where the project was after it was baked and excess paper was sanded away.

Since I wasn’t giving this plaque a vintage look I wanted to keep the borders looking clean. I used the white acrylic paint and a tiny round sponge to paint the edges and carefully overlapped it onto the picture to soften the borders. 

I sealed the front and the sides of the plaque with Minwax Polycrylic. If this was going to be a piece that endured a lot of use or was going to come into contact with liquid I would have applied more coats. 

If you look closely you’ll see I applied some liquid pearls in gold and white to give the picture a little dimension.  I followed the little chain hanging down in the cage with gold and I used the white to follow a portion of the picture that frames the bird and cage.

I purchased very inexpensive cup hooks at the hardware store. Before screwing them in at the bottom of the plaque, I made tiny holes with my drill and the smallest bit. I then just screwed the hooks in by hand.

Look how cute! I love making these. They’re easy to customize, thoughtful, functional and fun:)

I hung some of my measuring spoons and a cup so you could appreciate the scale of this plaque. I think the next one I make will be going in MY kitchen:)

Please contact me is you have any questions. You can also find a video on how I did this project on my YouTube Channel: Our High Street Home.

I hope to see you there:) Thank you for stopping by.

XXOORoni♥