Create Your Happiness: Découpage

Art runs in my veins from both sides of my family. On my mother’s side my Great-grandmother, Margot Lund, was one of the Queen of Norway’s seamstresses designing and sewing her dresses in the early 20th century. Her daughter, Elsa Lund, my grandmother, learned the seamstress trade and sewed her children’s clothes as well as her daughter’s Barbie clothes in the 1950s and 1960s.

She unfortunately never taught me how to sew and passed away when I was 17. It was only after her passing that I learned she had also been a skilled artist. I discovered many of her stunning nature-themed paintings framed and stacked inside cardboard boxes. I still recall taking time to hold and study each painting in my hand while looking at them in awe. I missed her more in those brief moments and wished we could have painted together. Her paintings are now with me wrapped safely inside plastic boxes until I have a home I can display them.

My father, on the other hand, was a musician and artist. He was taught how to play the guitar at the bright young age of 13, and later after high school performed with some of the big-name bands of today. When he settled down with my mom, he started a new craft of sketching and painting. His paintings were testimony that he was a natural artist. Watercolor was his medium and symbolic for his love of fishing and the great outdoors.

When I came along, I loved doing things with my hands whether it was drawing, crafts or writing. I still remember using those kid-friendly scissors. You know the kind with the plastic rounded tips so we can learn the feeling of holding scissors and how to use them? I was that student who always offered to design the posters for group projects. No one else wanted to anyways.

Throughout middle school and high school I was in Advanced Art classes, yet I struggled with math. Numbers to me were like a foreign language that my brain just couldn’t understand no matter how many times it was explained to me. But art. Art has always been a language that makes clear sense.

Once the pandemic hit, I stayed in isolation in my small studio in Washington, D.C. for the first 42 days. Pre-pandemic my city life was nonstop working a full-time job and multiple side jobs helping to promote the city food scene or attending events and fundraisers. I was rarely home.

The quiet time was welcoming at first cooking, painting, and blasting my favorite tunes. Isolation began to wear on me by the end of the first month. Social media didn’t help either seeing others being with their families and significant others while I was alone. My mother invited me to take the chance to drive to stay with her after we lived alone in isolation at the start of the pandemic.

Spending quality time with her and my favorite dog was rejuvenating. We cooked, sipped wine, and watched movies. What was going to be two weeks turned into moving me out of the city in July of 2020 and moving in with her to save money. Adults moving back in with their parents became a trend during the pandemic. Who knew we would ever live through a pandemic let alone move back in with our parents?

Over the recent years while wandering dreamily through beach shops wanting to someday own one of everything, I spotted découpage shells. I immediately thought, “I can do that!”

Découpage in French means “cutting out” and is the art of cutting and pasting cutouts. These can be anything from pictures in magazines to images on cocktail napkins. The first step is to cutout the image you want to adhere to a surface. Next, use a paintbrush to paint the Mod Podge on the surface you want the cutout to be placed. These surfaces include wood, metal, glass or shells. Mod Podge is traditionally used for découpage, and this fancy glue is also used as a sealer or finish for projects.

The image you cutout must be adhered immediately after painting the Mod Podge on the surface. Smooth out any bubbles with your fingers. Let it dry before adding the top layer of Mod Podge to your project. This is where it seals your project and, also adds a shine. Easy enough, right?

My inspiration for painting waned while I was working and living remotely in the country with my mother. The sad news each day about the rising number of COVID-19 cases kept my mind off creating new works of art. Crafting became my source of creative inspiration during this surreal time. Dining on raw oysters is one of my favorite foods, especially with a glass of bubbly. The shells were the perfect stage for découpage. I already had a collection of shells I collected from past beach combings.

After educating myself watching a variety of online tutorials, I ordered supplies from Amazon and Etsy. One order of cocktail napkins came from a lady in the United Kingdom. She sent me a sweet note inside a greeting card thanking me for supporting her and wishing me luck on my art project. Once the pieces arrived, it was time to teach myself how to create découpage shells. Découpage helped me to stay creative during one of the sadness times. I can now say I learned a new craft while we all stayed home to keep one another safe and healthy.