Out On A Whim Wednesday: Take Flight!

Today's Lesson From The Craft Room:  Boldly Go Where You Have Never Gone Before!!!!

I was so happy to be included in Lorraine's Pigs On Parade event!!!!!  You can read about it HERE.  I saw the original post too late, but not too late to see her post when she happened upon 2 additional pigs that needed to be decorated!  I jumped at the chance.  And then, once my pig arrived, we stared at each other for days on end...and I wasn't so sure I had made the right decision by jumping at the chance!  Seeing that plain pig staring at me brought up all kinds of weird thoughts...What should I do?  What if I ruin him?  What if I do something and it doesn't turn out quite the way I want?  What if everyone thinks my pig is ugly?  Yes...a lot of what if's and should's!  I am happy to say I survived the what if's and should's and jumped in with both feet!  I had never worked with joint compound before, but figured this was a great way to give it a try.  I first wrapped wire around the pig so that once he was decorated I'd be able to hang him up (I already knew I wanted to give him wings to fly!).  Next, I "iced" the pig...that was how it felt as I covered his entire body with joint compound and a small spatula - it was very peaceful.  Once he was covered, and while the joint compound was wet, I decided to mix a bunch of beads together and sprinkle and smoosh them into the compound.  I was definitely boldly going where I hadn't gone before!  Well, it looked great...until it began to dry and I heard "tap," "tap," "bounce," "tap."  Almost every single one of those beads fell off of the pig as it began to dry!  Oh well!  Now what to do with all of that white, dried joint compound????  Color it!  I took out some pink metallic powder and began to brush it over the pig.  It looked okay, but I really missed the look of all of those beads.  So, out came my next approach - gel medium!!!!!  Yeah!!!!  It worked!!!!  I first added the beads and then began adding micro beads and glitter by brushing additional bits of gel medium onto the pig as layers dried.  Yes, my craft room looked quite like the pig when I got done!  Glitter and beads everywhere!  But at least this time they stuck to the pig.  Oh, I forgot about the wings!  I hot glued them to the body before I began adding the joint compound.  They were die cut out of tooling foil.  I started thinking about ways to decorate them and was attracted to some iridescent film that I had purchased a bit ago and hadn't yet used.  I stamped the word "believe" on one of the pieces of film and then began cutting and die cutting the film and adding it to the wings.  It was another experiment and, after playing with layering the film a bit, I decided to end with a layer of the film without any type of medium on top - that way the film kept its shine.  The last step was to create the decorative wire hangar.  I used wire, beads and pieces of Stampbord that I cut and stamped and sponged.  I used a retired SU! set - Collage Alphabet - for the letters.  Yes, this was definitely an adventure and I am happy I boldly went where I had never gone before!  Thank you Lorraine!  I can't wait to see all of the other pigs on March 31st!!!!!