A Book, A Duck and A Candlestick....

No- it's not a joke or a strange version of Clue...it's my latest project!  About 8 months ago, I ran across several duck decoys @ the local thrift.  A few were painted by local artists, and a few evidently by someone's grandkids or something.   They were just about $1/each, and I loved the form, but the paint on a few.......well, notsomuch.  This particular decoy I had already primed over in anticipation of something awesome- but what on Earth would it be??  I am not an especially good detail painter.

Inspiration came in 2 ways.  One: a decorating magazine that has some cool, but pricey items, and the other: a tutorial from another blog.   There is an awesome tutorial on the fun blog Living With Lindsay for a book wreath, and she explains it better than I ever could, and I will show you my book wreath accomplishments below.   The decorating magazine had a large dog form that had been covered in decoupaged paper made from playing card images.  I also imagined forms covered with sheet music, but I had leftover book pages from my wreath project, so in the spirit of waste not/want not, torn book pages it would have to be!

My duck started out uglier (sorry kiddos) that this, but so you will not be forced to avert your eyes from my blog, I will only show you the primed image:

I simply used torn book pages and Modge Podge, and covered him/her up!

When I was covering the decoy, I used my poor raggedy fingernails to push the wet paper into the carved places, to keep the detail.  When it was dry, I sprayed it with 2 coats of clear acrylic. 

 

I also had rescued a sad little blue candlestick that was marked .25 at the thrift store as well:

 

As usual, a can of black spray paint cured the blue candlestick of it's shameful appearance.  Then I simply added strips of ribbon to the top to give it a little 'nest' for objects to sit on.  The ribbon I wanted to use was not wired, but I quick dip in some stiffener made it use-able for this application.

  

I found it was easier to add the ribbon loops more like a bow, with the pieces opposite of each other, instead of going around clockwise.  It also gave me the ability  to layer and move them to get them on more evenly.   There is some open time with the craft adhesive vs. using a hot glue gun, so that was what I used on the ribbon loops.

 

 

 

To add the eyelash fringe, I used the glue gun. 

 

 

I was going to glue the duck to the stand, but I decided that is was not necessary, plus I thought a small pumpkin would look great on the stand this fall.  So, whaddya think??

And, as promised, here are the pics of my very own versions of Lindsay's Book Wreath tute:

I rolled my paper a little differently than she did, and my large wreath came out like this:

This is not the wreath's permanent home. Our home office is a deep chocolate brown w/ copper and rust lightly faux finished over the brown, and I think it will really pop in there, near the bookcases.  

My small wreath was made on a flat, wooden letter 'O', instead of the foam wreath form.  For the large wreath, I used (2) new books from the Dollar Store (over 300 pages total!!), but for the small wreath I used a paperback from the thrift that was already brown and aged.  However, rolling the pages proved very difficult, because the paper was so dried out, it wanted to rip, and not roll.  So, if you do decide to use an aged or antique book, be sure the paper is not too old, or you end up wasting a lot of time and paper.  The pages from this old book would be great for decoupage, though.

OK- here's the small wreath:

And here is the back of the small wreath:

And I promise, the pics from the Olympic Peninsula will be next!  There was so much beauty there, I took (literally) 500 pictures, so it is hard to choose just the highlights- they are all pretty cool  :)

Thanks to all who joined the blog this week!  I have a great give-away for next week as well!!  I plan to announce it Monday, and pick the winner at the end of the week.