A Little Summer Distraction

What happens when 3 sisters get together?

Decoupage!

Sister Greta is visiting Cape Cod, from Alberta, Canada, a rare treat. Sister Jan thought the bureau in the dining room needed a little updating from its 1968 avocado green “antiqued” look. Sister Sally came into piles of boat plans, old magazines and other boat miscellanea, when her son, Zach (a high school, soon to be college sailor), cleaned out an old boat building business. Sally confessed that she had been harboring a secret desire to engage in Decoupage, and since she’s the baby of the family we decided to humor her.

Step 1: Jan paints the bureau a color called Blue Dragon; after it dries we are all surprised to see it’s the exact shade known in our family as “Sally Blue.” Step 2: All 3 sisters spend an afternoon cutting out the coolest boats, text and diagrams, and piling them in boxes. Step 3: Sally wakes up early one morning and bravely begins arranging pieces on the top and the drawers. Step 4: Gluing with the mysterious substance called Mod Podge, on a hot afternoon (the FIRST hot afternoon this year!), with all the windows closed lest a gust of wind blow away our layout. Whew. Step 5: Adding a polyurethane finish for durability.

We chuckled over a drawing of a “Typical Crew” which had been altered by the designer, with a pencil, adding a shamrock tattoo and increasing his dimensions both bow and stern. I decided he needed a little more expansion in the bow.

Equally amusing are the reminders to “Remember the Stopwaters!” and to “Check for Twist or Warp by Eye.” There are useful diagrams of Boring and Screwdriving Tools, The Right and Wrong Way to Sharpen a Bit, not to mention Perry’s Perpetual Tidescope, showing the Approximate Times for High Water, Boston, 1947.

In this detail you can see the signature I pieced together from scrounged text, on the bottom right.

This being our first decoupage effort, it’s a little rough, but I think with all the boat lovers in the family, it will provide entertainment for years to come.

Just in case you were wondering why I don’t get more tapestry weaving done…..