No. 25 Merry Christmas

1. Paint edge of plaque with 2 coats of black acrylic paint. Let dry thoroughly.

 2. Sand sharp edges of plaque so there is some bare wood showing.

3. Stain bare wood areas with Burnt Umber acrylic paint. You can also use your Vintage Photo ink for this step but it will color the Gel Medium if you work it too much. Let dry.

4. Lay a piece of scrap paper over the plaque. Run your finger around the edge to make a pattern. Cut out and use as a pattern to cut ledger paper.

boy, can you tell I had distress ink on my fingers when I did this step?

5. Use a thin coat of Gel Medium to glue ledger paper to plaque.  Let dry.
NOTE: Gel medium (Golden or Claudine Hellmuth brand) or Mod Podge will both work for the plaque.

Burnish with a brayer or bone folder.

I am sure you might notice that I have the brayer upside down in this picture.  The yellow stoppers are suppose to be facing up but when I staged the photo I was more concerned about trying to take the photo with my left hand.  Sorry about that.

Optional: Lightly sand edges of paper when the gel medium is still a bit wet to extremely distress the paper.  If you don't like this extreme distressing, then just wait to do the sanding until the gel medium is dry.

6. Ink edges of paper to increase aged appearance.

7. Paint another thin coat of Gel Medium over the entire plaque.  Set aside to dry again.

How to add word to the plaque-
8.  Use you computer to print the words Merry Christmas.

I used my current favorite font, Jailbird Jenna (it's a free font too) but you can use any font you like, just make a test copy to make sure it fits on the wood plaque.
We are going to do a tape transfer to get the words from the paper to the wood plaque.  If you have done this before then just skip to step 13.
So, before you can doing one more thing...with your Merry Christmas copy in hand, grab your purse and keys and drive to your local copy store to make a toner based copy of the words.  The only way you can skip this step is if you have a laser printer at home.  The technique will only work with a toner cartridge copy...ink jet will NOT work.  


9.  Once you have your toner based copy, trim paper from around the words.  Lay words on the table face up.

10. Peel contact paper from backing and place over words (sticky side down).  Burnish well with bone folder to adhere the contact paper to the copy of the words.  Do not skip this step.
NOTE:  Many people use packing tape to make these kinds of transfers.  I like using MATTE contact paper because I get to control of the size.  With packing tape you are limited to about 3" wide.  I also like the matte finish instead of the shiny tape.

you can trim away the extra tape before submerging in water

11. Submerse entire paper in water for at least 5 minutes. Yes, really in water.  I just put it in the bathroom sink.

12. After 5 minutes, use your fingers to roll away the paper pulp from the contact paper until contact paper is transparent and only the words remain.   Try not to send the paper pulp down the drain!

Trim away contact paper again (if you haven't already).  Lay on craft mat to dry, making sure sticky side is up or it can stick to the table.

13. After contact paper is dry it will become tacky again.  Add a bit of glue stick on the back (don't worry, it won't show) and add words to plaque over ledger paper.  Burnish well.
NOTE:  Because the font Jailbird Jenna has sharp edges I cut the contact paper right along the side of the letters, it was easy to cut right next to the black letters because of the straight lines.  If you use another font, just trim close.

if you click on the picture, you can barely see where the tape transfer begins and ends

14. Add glittered 7gypsies numbers and red bow to the plaque with a liquid glue. 

15. You can add an eye screw to top of plaque for hanging on the board with large T-pin.
I have mine stuck to the board with a large piece of foam tape but I think the eye screw in the top of the plaque would work much better to use from year to year. 


PINS 
Step by step instructions for the pins to hang the tags were given back in Dec of 2009 but I thought I would include a picture of all of them together.  Again, I used the Jailbird Jenna font for 4, 11, 17 and 24.

Well, we are off shopping today with our group that are here for the class on Sat.   I will try and post some pictures of the fun later.  Have a great weekend!