Decoupage Day at Work!

My Boss' son is graduating from High School this weekend. So for the graduation party she wanted to put some pictures of him on Wood (like the video below). She saw it on Pinterest. So since she was spending most of her time with family and getting the house ready - this became my job! :) I was very excited since I too had seen the video on Pinterest and thought is was a GREAT idea! So I was up for the mission...

I started with 10 blocks of weathered wood that she had her hubby cut from the wood in the barn. Then we realized that we didn't have the Gel Medium that it tells you that you need. Hmmm. She searched Hi and Lo and still nothing - so when we were about to scrap the idea and do something different we remembered that the new tenant next door was the art teacher for the high school. And guess what?! She had some! Yippee! I started by wiping all the pieces of wood down with a cloth, measuring and printing the pictures. Next step was to apply the Gel Medium. So far so good. Pressed the pictures, color side down, rubbed out all the bubbles, let dry over night.

Arrived to work this morning very excited about the next process which was to wet the backs of each of the pictures with water and rub off the paper to reveal the image. Easy Peasy - Right? I mean the gal in the video makes it look like it takes no time at all.

After trying the first one, then the next, and then the next one after that, I realized something very important... this was not going as easy as the vid shows. Thinking to myself - I must be doing something wrong. So I rewatched the video, then I read the comments below the video - and I saw one comment that said "if all the white won't come off then just get it as best as you can without pealing off the picture, then apply the mod podge and it will take care of the little white areas." Awesome! So that is what I did...

I thought this has GOT to work! Right?

Nope! Although this one looks cool - it did not work so well on the others. So... back to the drawing board (ie Photoshop).

I remembered that I had lots of wood grain backgrounds in my stock photos (doesn't everyone?) So I pulled up one of the pictures, placed the wood grain pic over it (in layers) and adjusted the Opacity of the Wood Grain Layer to 45% and  Changed the field (to the left) of the Opacity to Vivid Light - YES! This works!

I was so excited this worked! So next I printed out all the pics that I had applied the wood grain layer to. Set out my wood blocks and applied a thin layer of Matte Mod Podge to the wood. Next I placed each of the pics on the wood blocks, and smoothed out all of the bubbles. At this point, you can either wait for the underlayer to dry OR you can do what I did (because I can be impatient) and just coat the top of each of the pics with a thin layer of Matte Mod Podge. I then set them outside to dry. Here is the finished product. What do you think? Personally I like it a lot and I like the way it still looks a little weathered but with a whole lot less hassle!

Here is the wood grain photo I used as the wood grain layer >> Download <<