Mod Podge and Paint Window Clings

So I didn't get a post up last week for a few reasons. The first being that school started again.  But also because we started a puzzle over New Years on the kitchen table where I usually craft because it's the only place in the house with decent light.  This puzzle is quite possibly the world's hardest 1000 piece puzzle known to man (ok not really, but you get the idea), we're not even a quarter done with it after nearly 3 weeks.  It's a photomosaic puzzle which means there are no definitive edges to the images and the tiny photos repeat and are multiple colors...you get the idea, it's crazy hard. So I was already behind on my project...but then it just kept getting more problematic.

So I took to the little table in our front room to whip up a quick project, and well, in addition to being dark, it didn't go as planned. So another strike in getting the project posted to the blog. I am really on a roll, but I figured I'd let you see what happened so you can make your own adjustments and perhaps come up with something better.

I decided to make some window clings out of Mod Podge and craft paint. I saw this project on the Mod Podge Rocks blog a while back and knew that I wanted to try it. They spread their paint and mod podge out onto plastic blanks. I don't have any, so I thought parchment paper would be a good substitute. I should have used my craft mat, but I didn't want to ruin it if it didn't peel off. 

So I grabbed a container of mod podge that was just starting to dry out and dumped the contents onto the parchment.  You can see a few lumps below--I picked those out with my pallette knife before stirring in two shades of red craft paint.  Then I smoothed it out into a sheet.

I also managed to get a little more out of the container so I did some in purple. I noticed pretty much immediately that the parchment paper was starting to ripple from the water content of the paint and glue.  I hoped it would smooth out as everything dried, but it didn't. The inspiration post said to let it dry over night, but mine was still wet the next day. So I let it dry for two days.

Since the glue and paint were rippled, I figured this whole project was a bust, but I thought I'd try peeling the paint up anyway...it came right off in one sheet.  So I'm confident if it was attempted on a different surface that it would be more smooth.

Another problem I had was that the red sheet didn't mix up very well.  It looked solid opaque when I spread it out, but apparently it wasn't.  So that mixed with the wrinkles made for a very artsy looking sheet of paint and glue.

I went ahead and cut out some hearts (I just printed a template out from the internet and cut around it so I would get the proportions correct).  And they were not as bad as I thought they'd be.  They are still really lumpy, but they kind of looked marbled and intentionally lumpy...or at least that's what I told myself.

So then I tried to stick them up on the window. They didn't want to stick. I remembered reading that warming them up would help, so I breathed on them until they stuck to the window, but they fell down shortly after I took the photos.

So yeah, this project was problem after problem. I learned--don't use parchment (and probably not wax paper either), be sure to mix the paint in thoroughly and spread it as even as you can, It will probably take a couple days to dry, and lastly that you may need a hair dryer to get these to stick--but perhaps if they weren't so lumpy, that wouldn't be such a big problem.

Update 2016: These are also not very reusable. I found them in the bottom of my box of Valentine's Day Decorations broken into pieces--they were completely brittle after 1 year.