Just a little while ago, my folks surprised me with a display piece for when I'm taking photos of my needle felted necklaces. They had seen one of those black velvet displays and scooped it up for me because it was on sale. You've all seen them before. They look pretty much like this....
While the style was fantastic , it didn't quite work as I hoped because I have to take such close up photos of the felted landscape. I swear every fluffy, fuzzy and stray piece of floating cat hair STUCK right to that black velvet. No matter what brush or cloth I took to the velvet, it wouldn't go away. I was not amused.
So while the snow was falling yet again (could have swore the calendar said it was Spring!), I took my display downstairs by the heat vent in the floor and started to apply layers of gesso. The first coat just seemed to get sucked into the velvet and I was beginning to think maybe I had ruined it. As each coat dried by the heat of the vent (I'm not the most patient crafter), it was beginning to look like it was going to work.
This is what it looked like with 4 coats of gesso applied with just a sponge brush. I didn't do the bottom section of the display. Just the neck and chest section. It was quite rough in sections but the good thing about gesso is that you can take sandpaper to it.
So out came my handy piece of sandpaper and I smoothed all the rough sections down.
Placing a necklaces on it, I found the color of the plain gesso was too bright.
I flipped thru my paint collection and found a bottle of Martha Stewart craft paint called "Lake Fog" and covered the gesso in that. I loved it! I was playing around a bit more and painted the word "postcard" in a light caramel ink.
I liked how it turned out but the more I thought about it during the evening, the more I wanted something different written there. So I took some paint and covered over the wording. Let it fully dry and placed a thin coat of ModPodge on it as well. I didn't want the ink at some point to maybe bleed up thru the paint. I painted yet another coat of paint in that spot and let it fully dry again.
This time, I just took a Sharpie fine tip black marker and wrote the message I whisper to myself all the time when I get nervous or anxious ... Just Breathe.
I am quite pleased with how my little DIY jewelry display makeover came together. It really was quite simple to do. No more fuzzies in my photos! heehee
I'm thinking I'll be keeping my eyes open for a few more display pieces and doing this again.
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