Wall Medallions

You know, the hardest part of this whole project was trying to figure out what I'd call these in my post. I was pretty sure that there was a better name for these than "wall circle hangy thingies." But with help from my friend Megan, we decided on "disc wall decor." Sounds fancy, doesn't it?

*edit* an awesome reader commented on my MEDALLIONS. I knew there was a name for these! Post title changed with a Thank you Amnah! 

I picked these up a couple of weeks ago when I was out with my Grandmother. She was down visiting from Michigan. We love going to thrift stores together. That lady is like a bloodhound, and if there is a good deal for an item, she'll sniff it out. I'll go down an aisle, and not see anything I like. Then she'll go through the same aisle, and she'll say "Look at this gorgeous (candlestick/frame/mirror/etc) and it's only ($1/$2/some other steal of a price). But I did happen to stumble across these on my own. Guess how much I paid for them? $1 a piece. Woot woot.

I can always tell when hubby isn't thrilled with something I bring home, because he'll look at it and say "And that's going where?" But I knew these could be turned into something fabulous. And yes, he loves them now.

So my first step? Let's get out one of my favorite things: spray paint. I'm pretty sure spray paint has to be in the top 100 inventions of all time.

I love this color. And next we're going to set up our spray painting area. It's super fancy, don't be jealous.

Yeah, we're going to pretend I didn't get spray paint on the grass from a previous project. Shhhh.

And then, with spray painting, less is more. It's much better to do a bunch of thin coats, than heavy coats. Then you're stuck with uneven coverage, drips, globs, etc.

See how thin my first couple of coats are?

So I decided to try out a new (to me) product. I've seen a lot of people "age" crafts, and it looks super cute. So I grabbed this product at Hobby Lobby. They didn't have a 40% off coupon that week, but I didn't want to wait. My awesome father in law spoiled me at Christmas with a really nice gift card to HL, so I used that to purchase the $3 antiquing medium.

So then I set up my work station. My work station = my kitchen counter. I'm not cool  lucky enough to have a dedicated craft room. But I'm not jealous. Nope. Not. Jealous. At. All.

And yes, a Coke is a necessity when I craft. And eat. And watch TV.

The antiquing medium says to use a foam brush, which I have a ton of laying around. But if you don't, I think you can pick up a 4 pack at HL for a buck or two. I'm using the 1 inch brush, I knew I'd have a harder time getting into all the small crevices with a larger brush. And I save the paper that they use at HL to pack up your breakables when you check out (the cream colored paper under my largest disc). It's great to use under my projects when I'm painting. And yay for using them before just throwing them away.

So the above picture shows the middle part that I already did, and the outer part that I'm starting on. I added just a teeny amount of water to the medium, but I don't think it's 100% necessary. I just wanted to give myself a bit more time to mess with the product before it set. But it seemed to work fine on it's own. I made sure to get the medium into the crevices, since that's what we're trying to bring out.

Finished with the first one.

The antiquing medium says to brush it on with a foam brush, and then use a soft cloth to wipe it off. I didn't have any tee shirts on hand (one suggestion I've read). But we do have a bunch of Viva paper towels. I normally don't buy such expensive paper towels, but we had to use them as baby wipes for a while (Ava had really bad diaper rash and the pediatrician suggested to use Viva paper towels and water). Anywho, I used these paper towels, and they were awesome. No little fuzzies came off (like with cheap paper towels). I only used two paper towels for this whole project. I did use q-tips on the smaller discs to get into the crevices.

Here is a before and after.
 

And here it is on my wall. Not bad for $6. And that wooden bowl underneath? Another Grandma find for $5.

*A little stain goes a long way. I didn't use very much antiquing medium to do all three discs.
*Dabbing the stain off seemed to work a lot better than just wiping it off (would leave streaks) or rubbing the paper towel in small circles (it would sometimes take off too much from the crevices.)
*Work in small sections. You don't want to get too ahead of yourself, and it starts to dry before you've been able to remove the stain from the places it's not supposed to be. 

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think! Happy crafting!






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