Painted Silhouette ~ and a product road test

A few weeks ago Linda, from Craftaholics Anonymous, put out a request on Facebook for "Craft Product Road Testers".   The request was something like "do you like free craft products, crafting, or showing off crafts?", so yea... that basically sums me up... so I immediately applied!  :) I didn't think I would ever get chosen, but I actually did! Yay!

I was super excited because the product for review was decoupage, besides hot glue, it is one of my most used mediums in my crafting projects.  She sent us 4 bottles of the medium, 2 matte and 2 gloss, we picked either gloss or the matte for our project.  I picked matte, so I needed to do 2 projects using the 2 different matte bottles then review the differences/similarities.   Did you get all that?? lol You can read all about it on Linda's site here.  The brands are kept a secret until after everyone submits their reviews.  

So onto what I did! I am in the process of re-doing my living room wall, I wanted to incorporate more family photos than what I had, and that means our dogs too, of course. :) I have had an idea of doing a dog silhouette for a long time, but haven't really gotten around to it, but since I needed 2 projects and I have 2 dogs I thought Yes! This is a perfect time to get it done.

So, another suggestion Linda had for this test was to use things already in your craft stash, which I loved, because I need any excuse to use up all the stuff I have in my craft closet.  The only thing I did buy for this were the 2 small canvases, which I actually just now thought that I could have used cardboard and then I wouldn't have had to buy anything. Oh well, maybe you can do that if you try this project out! :)   

So onto the supplies:

Large canvas

2 small canvas' (or cardboard) 

book pages
decoupage

paint 

paint brush

 I didn't take step by step pictures because this was VERY very easy to do. And it didn't even require a cutting machine,  Score! 

First, I cut 1 inch strips of book pages. And used the decoupage medium to glue them randomly onto the small canvas.  I used one bottle of the medium on one small canvas and the other bottle on the other small canvas.

Next, I took a picture of my dog's profile and printed them out on regular copy paper and cut them out around the head.  I decoupaged these over the book pages. 

  

Once it was dry, I just went over the printed picture with acrylic paint.  

Then I glued the finished canvases to a larger canvas so that they would be more like one piece of art.  I added stripes to the larger canvas to match this one I already have in our living room as well.

And... done! So easy! 

I didn't really go into this thinking I would paint the silhouettes, I was just going to leave the photo as is, but in black and white, I thought it would look old and newspapery, but it really just looked weird, ha.  So,  as I was painting the sides of the small canvases with a blue to add some color, thinking that would make it look less weird. I thought, Hello! Just paint over the pictures! That made a huge difference, and I loved how it turned out.   I was so stoked because I didn't have to use any kind of a stencil or cut out, that would have added another step in the process and the less steps the better, am I right?

Although it's kind of funny because the dog on the right's head is actually about 4 times smaller than our other dog. But if I would have done the proportion right, his silhouette would be like the size of quarter. No really, he's that small. LOL

So onto my thoughts on the craft mediums, the 2 matte bottles I selected were labeled with a red top and an orange top.  I used the orange bottle first... this is our dog Weezy he's lazy and scared of his shadow, but we love him.

And I used the red bottle on the second... This is Marty, he has pencils for legs and only wants you for your warm lap to sit on, but we love him too ;)

Overall each of these were pretty similar.  They both had a good matte finish, but side by side I thought the red bottle had a slightly more matte look, not much but in comparing the two it was.  

The major thing that I did notice is that I only used 1/4 of the orange bottle and ended up using half of the bottle of the red bottle.  It seemed when I was using the orange bottle I didn't have to keep dipping my paintbrush back in the decoupage like I did the red bottle.   That's kind of a big difference, so if I had to choose one or the other I would choose the orange, just for the fact it would last longer.  

This was so fun getting to compare 2 different mediums and seeing the differences/similarities.  Thank you so much, Linda, for letting me road test these products out! 

If you have any questions about this project just let me know! 

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