I didn't have an appropriate stamp block for my ornament, so I cut my own. First, though, I stamped my image onto a scrap of kraft cardstock, to get an idea of what size I needed to cut the wood. I also colored the bird & mistletoe sprigs with colored pencils, & used a couple of browns to color in a branch for the cardinal to stand on. I also went over the eye with a black glaze pen & added the highlight areas with a white gel pen.
The panel came out to 2-1/4" square, so I cut a block that size from a scrap of 3/4" birch plywood I had left over from another project. My "drill press" attachment is too large & unwieldy for such a small piece, so I decided to add an eye screw to the top & bottom of my ornament for the hanger & dangle. To make pilot holes, I secured the block in a bench vise, & used a hammer & #17 nail to "drill" a hole. I just tapped the nail in a short bit, & then pulled it out with pliers. Then I repeated on the opposite side of the block.
I primed the block with a coat of gesso, & painted it with 3 coats of sage green acrylic craft paint.
I added my image panel to one side of the block with Perfect Paper Adhesive liquid glue. There were a couple of gaps in the wood plies on 2 edges of the block, which I could have filled in with wood filler, had I not been too lazy to do so. So to cover it, I cut a 3/4" wide strip of red cardstock, & glued it around the perimeter of the block. The only part of the sage green color that shows is on the back now, but that's OK with me.
I let the glue dry thoroughly, & coated the ornament with matte-finish decoupage medium to seal it. I used my paper piercer to poke through the red cardstock where I'd created the holes in the block earlier. It was a bit tricky to find the holes, but I just kept carefully poking with the tool until it hit the open spot. I used pliers to hold the eye screw & screwed one in each hole.
I got a couple of eye pins, and added some old metal & plastic beads to them. I attached the eye end of each to the eye screws, & used pliers to make a loop at the other end of the pin to keep the beads on. I made the loop on the top one large, & then tied a piece of 1/8" red satin ribbon through that for a hanger. I plan to give this to my mom for Christmas.
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2021 GMT Views: 1199
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