My Crafty Cross

So I kind of went against my basic principles for this project and didn't base it on any particular Pinterest tutorial, but I did use some skills that I learned from browsing Pinterest in the past. I decided to decoupage a wooden cross for my first project because it is fairly simple and not too time consuming. In other words, I chose to keep this project short and sweet.

In the end this project only cost me about $3. I bought the wooden cross on clearance at Hobby Lobby for only $1.79 and the book (that I tore the pages out of) from the Dollar Store for, you guessed it, $1. I already owned the brush, paint, and Mod Podge, so it's safe to say that this project was pretty wallet-friendly.

It just took a few easy steps to completely transform this simple cross.
I began by sanding down the edges of the wooden cross. It then became clear to me why it was on clearance because it wasn't very symmetrical and the base was falling off. It actually was quite convenient that the base fell off, however, because it made the painting and decoupaging a lot easier!

The cross is sanded and ready to
have its edges painted!

After the edges were properly sanded, I painted them with a light gray acrylic paint. I chose to paint the edges first because I could cover up any paint mishaps with the decoupage in the next step. It was kind of hard to paint all of the curves and niches, but I dabbed paint on them and they turned out just fine.

The cross is ready to be decoupaged!

After I painted the edges, I tore out tons of strips from the book I got from the Dollar Store. I accidentally bought the "revised young reader" version of Alcott's Little Women (in an attempt to include classic literature in my project). The watered-down version of the novel is not what I wanted, but for the purposes of this project it turned out all right. I tore out strips from the book, highly entertained by its young language and illustrations (yes, there were illustrations). After I tore out enough strips (illustrations not included), I was ready to begin Mod Podging.

All covered and ready to be
cut down to size

As planned, the cross looked like a total mess after the strips were glued down. I cleaned the edges up with a scissors and a sharp exact-o-knife. This was probably the hardest step because I had to cut in all the cross's tiny nooks and crannies. The edges looked far from perfect when I was done, so I took some sand paper to smooth them out a little bit. The only thing left to do was glue the base back on!

I'm pretty happy with the end result! This project was far from perfect, but it was inexpensive, simple, and fun, which is what really matters. For my first project, I am pretty satisfied.