Decoupage Wall Art, Take 2

I have some time, so I'm going to post some photos I've had waiting around for a while. This is my second attempt at decoupage. My first attempt was posted on thisyounghouse.com here. You can see more photos starting here. I was quite happy with how that turned out, so I decided the blank wall above our hide-a-love seat (folds out into a small bed AND hides guitars & electrical stuff behind it - hey, we're short on space!) needed...something.

I turned to the stack of random items I had saved from the dumpster on a cleaning day at the office and found two small pieces of styrofoam that were roughly "rectangle" and about and inch thick. I also found a box that at one time was original packaging for some electrical thingy or something. Anyways, it was also rectangular, smooth and about 2 inches thick. I chose three photos that I had taken in the old part of town in Alcala de Henares. The larger piece is the old University building and the two smaller ones are lights strung up over Plaza Cervantes and a weather vane seen through the gazebo in the plaza. I converted them to black and white, then measured the box & styrofoam to determine what size I needed to make each photo. I didn't want to blow them up more than absolutely necessary. I ended up needing to Photoshop some edges on the one of the University building because the shape was different than the original.

I think I printed about 6 different panels for that one, then spliced them together to make one big photo. I could only print on A4 paper. Then I basically just glued it to the box and wrapped it like a present. When that was dry, I brushed Modpodge over the outside. I must admit that I only did one coat. It was messy, and after the first coat dried, I was ready to move on to something else. I did the same process for the small images on the styrofoam. I only had to use one piece of paper for the smallest one. Styrofoam was great for this project in that it was the right shape and extremely light weight, but it's not easy to glue the edges down well. The best thing about using styrofoam, though, is that I only had to put a tiny little nail in the wall and just pushed the styrofoam over it to hang.

So there you go, nearly free art! Check out more photos of this project starting here.