Decoupage

To decorate an item with various papers and glue and occassionally adding paint effects is to decoupage!  Usually the item are small items such as boxes or trays, but it could easily be an item of furniture, they are covered using images which can be from purpose made papers or even just from magazines or catalogues.  After a layer of images has been glued down then the whole item is covered with varnish to seal it and left todry, when dry the next layer can be added then varnished, and so on until the item has as many layers as you want added.  Another couple of coats of varnish is usually added at the end, this can be 20 coats or more!  The varnish layers take away the look of the images being placed and stuck on to the item so they look like thay have been painted on.  The taditional method used upto 40 coats of varnishand then it was sanded until there was a polished finish.

Decoupage is a very popular craft, and easily accessible due to many of the items used being available around the house.  The main items used for decoupage are:-

• Something that needs decorating.
• Images to use.
• Something to use to cutout the images such as scissors.
• Glue & glue spreader.
• Something to use to smooth down the image and remove excess glue (such as alolly stick).
• Cloth or tissue toremove excess glue.
• Sealer such as varnish or lacquer.

3D Decoupage or Paper Tole

The art of 3D decoupage or paper tole is taking several identical 2D images and using them to create one 3D image.  The art is done by using one sheet as the base and then cutting out sections from the other sheets to be used to build up the 3d image on the base sheet.

Decoupage techniques are used regularly in scrapbooking.