Bling It Up: Personalising Your Space

I have a confession to make. I'm in love...not only with my hunky and talented husband, but also with one of the greatest craft/scrap booking supplies places I have ever found - Kaisercraft. Kaisercraft has several outlet stores in Australia, one being in Robina on the Gold Coast. I am thankful that I live in Brisbane, otherwise I would be there every day - spending money.

My friends will vouch I am obsessed. When we were there last time, I drooled over everything, took my time picking up bits and pieces and not surprisingly was the last one to leave the store with my very big bag of goodies. Kaisercraft Robina recently had a 20% off sale, so off I went, with lovely hubby in tow, and spent up a storm (much to my husband's feigned delight). "A happy wife, is a happy life" - right?

While I was there, I was inspired to add a couple of more craft projects to my ever-burgeoning list, one of which was the "Bling It Up" Project.

I thought it would be perfect to purchase the first initials of my husband's and my names ("N" and "R"), paint them up, cover them in self-adhesive jewels and put them on display in our living room area.

In the beginning: The plain MDF wooden letter "N".

As always for my wooden projects, I primed each letter's surface with two coats of gesso paint, to prevent the wood from absorbing the coloured paint to be painted over the top. This time I used a different brand of gesso, Chromacryl. My brief review of the product is that it definitely has more coverage compared with other gesso products I have used. Once dry, the result is a fine "tooth" finish - which can either be sanded gently or left as is.

Primed and ready: The letter "R" with two coats of gesso applied.

I had already decided that the "R" would be painted in Derivan's Structure Matisse paint "Magenta". However, I needed to visit my local Riot Art and Craft supplies store to choose the colour for "N". I knew it had to be blue (husband's favourite colour) - and had researched the many different colours of blue via Derivan's website. However, one can never really tell how a colour is going to work out by purely looking at their computer screen! It's definitely best to go in person and choose the colour off the shelf.

I ended up picking Derivan's Structure Matisse paint "Ultramarine Blue". It's an interesting paint colour, not just for its vibrancy, but also for its finish. Unlike other Structure Matisse paints, Ultramarine Blue dries as a matte finish. Most other colours I have worked with so far have dried with a distinct glossy look.

Both letters required a minimum of three coats of paint. Upon application of each coat of paint, the base coat took on a darker hue. Once dry, two coats of gloss varnish was applied to both sides of each letter.

Work in progress: "N" and "R".

The final stage of the project was definitely my favourite. I had purchased packs of round and flower shaped self-adhesive jewels to stick on the front side of both of the painted letters. I decided that there wasn't going to be any order to where each jewel was going to be placed. Nevertheless, I did decide to start with sticking on the larger shapes first.

"R": Bigger shapes were stuck on first.



However, almost at the end of this process for both letters, disaster struck! I had run out of jewels!!

Almost there: Needed more jewels!



A quick dash to my local Spotlight store allowed me to buy a few more packs - phew!!

And here are the finished products!!

In-situ: "N" and "R", blinging up and personalising our living room area!!



Love it!!

CraftyRach xo