How to Add Vinyl to a Wood Slice (and What NOT to Do!)

Oh Happy Day...I'm on vaca! And you know what that means? I can't leave you all without a lesson so I'm handing the blog over to today's sub, Miss Stephanie from Sandpaper and Glue! She's got a great project tutorial for you today on adding vinyl to a wood slice. (Love this!)  Best of all she's sharing some tips on what NOT to do when working with vinyl! I'll let Stephanie take it from here...

Hi all! I'm Stephanie and I blog over at Sandpaper and Glue all about my experience as a first time home owner on a budget. I'm so excited to share my wood slice art with you today! I am a beginner Silhouette-er with expert level dreams, so I thought it would be good to share not only what worked about this project but also all the things that did not work at all. Learn from my mistakes people, because this craft was a doozey!

You will need:

• Round Wood Slice (bought at Michael's, with a 50% off coupon of course!)
• Silhoutte vinyl in the color of your choice (I used black)
• Silhouette hook and spatula (I don't have these things but they would have made life much easier- I used a little metal walnut pick and butter knife instead)
• Polycrylic and brush or Mod Podge (optional)

I knew I wanted a scroll-y, rounded script for my project and this is what I came up with:

 

I did a lot of stretching and pulling to get it into the correct shape, and just used the grid on the mat to make sure it was the right size for my wood slice. What I didn't think of though, is how extremely thin and intricate the lines were. Ugh. (If you want a copy of this file, email me at sandpaperandglue (at) gmail (dot) com). 

Teacher Tip: Make super thin fonts easier to work with by using the offset

My first mistake is that I did not use transfer paper, and honestly I'm not sure if it would have worked because the lines are so thin- but it definitely would have been worth a try. I used my pick to peel up and place each individual shape, and then the smooth side of a butter knife to get rid of bubbles and folds. It took for-ev-er (okay, maybe an hour or two, but still!) and I ended up changing a little bit of the final look as I placed the pieces together. 

Mistake number two came when I decided to use a spray sealer on the piece. I don't even have a picture of what it looked like before the sealer went on because I didn't expect there to be any problems, but basically the spray made the vinyl warp, curl, and even shrink a little: 

  

 Luckily, I ended up liking the Tim Burton-y looking shriveled letters so I carefully replaced the pieces that shriveled off with super glue and left it to dry overnight. It took about 5 minutes to spray on the sealer, and about 45 minutes to fix what I had done. Whoops. 

If you do want to seal your piece, I recommend using a foam brush and Polcrylic, or some Mod Podge. The sealer deepens/richens the wood color and also adds protection to the edges; the bark edges of the slice are very flaky and crusty so the sealer makes sure it doesn't shed all over your house. 

 

To see how and where I used the slice, hop on over to this post!

Thanks for reading, and I'd love to have you join me in my little corner of the web:

If you'd like to guest post on Silhouette School....apply to sub!