Heather's Housewarming Gift

I wrote this post as a member of the Guest Design Team at Flamingo Scraps and wanted to share it here.

We are not military, but one of the sad realities of living in a military community is that friends move away, often with little notice. One of my close friends was recently transferred across the country to the Florida panhandle. They'd always rented in the past, but this time they bought their first home. I decided to make them a housewarming gift.

I knew I wanted to make some sort of wall hanging that could hang either indoors or outdoors. I found a ceramic heart from Provo Craft and painted it a creamy neutral. I cut their last name (Brown) from some BasicGrey cardstock (brown, of course!) and adhered the letters using Mod Podge. Then I gathered the following supplies:

  

I used the Key Lime Pie Glimmer Mist to dye the cord a nice leaf green color, then I glued the cord around the perimeter of the heart. I covered the whole thing with about 10 coats of Outdoor Mod Podge, waiting at least 15 minutes between coats. I'd never used the Outdoor variety before, but I'd heard that it dries tacky, even with the proper drying time. This was indeed the case, so I gave the heart a quick spray of Krylon to seal it. Perfect!

I really wanted to use a Prima flower on this project, but I wasn't sure how to weather-proof it in case Heather decided to hang this outdoors. Time to experiment! I got a test flower and brushed on a coat of the Mod Podge. Quite a bit of yellow came off on my brush. I tried dabbing (rather than brushing) and it worked much better. I was able to apply a thin coat that sealed the color in. I applied multiple coats to both front and back. The Mod Podge behaves differently on paper than on ceramic, as the flower wasn't tacky to the touch when I finished. It did have a very interesting texture- it almost felt like a rubbery plastic! I brushed the yellow ink pad over a pearl and added it to the center of the flower, then attached the whole thing to the heart. It looked pretty cute, but was definitely missing something. I found some leaves, but the color was wrong. The color was wrong... would the Glimmer Mist solve the problem? Yes! They ended up exactly as I'd hoped. It's so satisfying when that happens! I used the same technique of dabbing on a primer coat of Mod Podge front and back, then added a bunch more finishing coats. For good measure, I sprayed the whole thing with two more coats of Krylon.

Here's the finished wall hanging:

Miss you, Heather!