This vintage Halloween napkin decoupage plate was such a fun Halloween craft.
Don’t you just love vintage holiday decorations? I have been slowly collecting mostly vintage Christmas decorations, but this year I found some really fun vintage Halloween decorations. (Thank you Marketplace!)
One of the fun vintage Halloween items I found were some darling vintage Halloween crepe paper napkins! After thinking how to best display these fragile napkins, I came up with an idea to decoupage clear glass plates with them.
This project used 4 Fusion Mineral Paint colors, and the Fusion Decoupage and Transfer Gel. (I used one more optional product that I’ll show you a little further down in this post)
I made a total of 3 plates, using 1 napkin per plate.
Cutting the Napkins
Starting with one napkin, I snipped out the designs I wanted to put on the plate. For this part, you could be as detailed as you wanted to be. As you can see on the first napkin, (my learning example) I wasn’t too detailed. As I went along each plate did get a bit more detailed.
Decoupaging
To permanently adhere the napkin to the plate, I spread an even amount of decoupage gel to the back of the plate, a little larger than the snipped out napkin piece. Then carefully laid the snipped napkin, piece by piece, face down onto the gel.
Yes, face down… remember, I glued the napkin to the back of the plate… the idea is for the pattern to show best through the glass, through the front of the plate.
To prevent the gel from drying too quickly, I only spread enough gel for 1 napkin piece at a time.
Once the piece was in place, (these are old napkins and moving them around after they’re wet with gel doesn’t work well, so I tred to take care placing it the first time!) I then brushed on a coat of gel over the back of the napkin piece. I did notice that if I tried to brush too hard or too much, the napkin would easily tear &/or start leaching orange dye. So I tried to brush the gel on the back quickly and immediately after placing the napkin piece before it had time to soften too much.
After all the pieces were on the back of the plate, I set it face down centered on a jar, ( that kept the face of the plate off the table completely) to dry overnight.
Next day, I did notice that the gel was slightly visible on the plate. Fortunately after this I painted the back of the plate, (you’ll see that part coming up) that dried gel completely disappeared. However, where the paper napkins were, after the gel was dry, it does ever so slightly show on the face of the napkins pieces. I feel that because the napkins are vintage and do have some natural fading, it isn’t noticeable and fits right into the vintage-ness. đŸ™‚
Polka Dots
To blend the rest of the background of the glass plate in with the vintage napkins style, I used the end of an artist paint brush and dipped it into the Park Green, (which matched really well to the green in the napkins) and made random polka dots on the glass.
Outlining Napkin Pieces
I decided to finish the edge of the pieces of napkin with an outline of Ash, thinking that would help my not so detailed cutting of the napkin designs. It did!
Even comparing just this little pumpkin, that is outlined, to the other designs that aren’t, you can tell how much better it looks with an outline.
Plate Edge
After the outlining was done, I went around the edge of the plate with black.
Painting Background
For the background color, I mixed up a bit of Little Star yellow into some Tuscan Orange color. Each napkin was a little different color, so slightly different amounts of yellow and orange were used.
To test the color, I dabbed a little of it on a napkin scrap. (The color of paint does change as it dries, so be sure to dry the paint sample.) I would say the mix was approximately 1 part Little Star to 3-4 part Tuscan Orange.
Finishing Up Back of Plate
On the first plate I did, I painted 2 coats of the custom orange paint mix on the back and thought it was opaque enough, (it wasn’t!). After that was dry, I then painted Ash on the back. I learned the hard way this wasn’t ideal.
This was the first plate I did and though it’s cute, I am bummed I didn’t put enough layers of the orange paint on before finishing with the black paint..
So on the first plate I did, there is shadowing visible through the orange.
I am glad to say, on the other 2 I painted with 4-5 layers of orange before I painted the Ash on, and there is no shadowing and the orange background color looks perfect. (So if you’re doing this, be sure to add enough layers of the color you want to see so that it is totally opaque.)
This is what the back of the plates looked like with just the black paint finishing them. The back of the plate with the Ash paint shows the differing levels from decoupage and polka dots.
Optional Texture Plate Back
I wanted to add a little bit more detail on the back of my plates.
So I used the extra Fusion product, Fresco, on the back of my plates. (If you’ve purchased this DIY Vintage Halloween Napkin Decoupage Plate kit from Frame and Frills, Fresco isn’t included in the kit. Therefore, if you want this extra detail on your plate, you’ll need to purchase Fresco in addition to the kit.)
Fusion Fresco is a powder you add to paint to create a texture. It’s super easy and perfect to create a vintage texture on things. For these plates it worked great to camouflage the napkins and such on the back of the plates. (This texture is totally not visible from the front, so that’s why I didn’t include it in the kit. Some may not feel it’s important and not want it.)
To mix up the powder, I added about 10% powder to some Ash paint and thoroughly mixed it up with my brush.
After all the powder was incorporated into the paint, I just painted it onto the plate back. It goes on very easily, and smooth, but maintains a thickness with the texture of the brush.
To create added texture, I just went back with the side of my paint brush and tapped it on the Fresco paint. However I manipulated the fresco paint, it totally maintained that shape as it dried, which was several hours.
It dried to a beautiful matte finish, same as the paint, and it’s really adhered solidly on the back of the plate!
Vintage Halloween Napkin Decoupage Plates on Display
Here are the plates I finished, as they are displayed on the back of our hutch. I think the vintage Halloween napkin designs are so quaint. This was just such a fun way to preserve them to enjoy them for many years.
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