Crafting | Decoupaged chicks

Lisa Cestkowski

11 years ago

I don’t decorate much for Easter these days. Primarily because most of my Easter decorations look something like this:

I admit I have a huge soft spot for kitschy flocked holiday decorations (which is why I own these chicks in the first place). But I don’t do pastels anymore. And most Easter decorations are some baby-soft shade of pink, purple or, like my little chicks, yellow.

Instead of leaving the chicks languishing in a box on a closet shelf again this spring, I decided I’d give them a makeover and then set them out on display. Step one in the makeover: Tear off the faux velvet covering…

… which left me with three naked, slightly scary looking plastic chicks. I grabbed a stack of old newspapers and a container of Mod Podge to proceed with the makeover when The Boss showed up.

I swear that cat has a sixth sense. He can be on the other side of the house — or the other side of the planet — but the minute I set a bowl of cereal or an open container of Mod Podge in front of me — BOOM — there he is. Blocking me from eating/decoupaging and shedding his fur all over my breakfast/project.

I decoupaged the chicks in three parts: the wings and tails first, then the breast area and finally the head, using different parts of the newspaper as I went along.

When I started, I thought this was going to be a quick little project. But, as usual, I’d drastically underestimated the amount of time and detail work involved…

… and I forgot to factor in the additional time involved in removing each of the individual cat hairs that kept appearing in my Mod Podge.

I debated whether the chicks should have eyes or not. But they looked a little freaky being eyeless. So I popped the original plastic eyes back in initially.

After I was done with all of the decoupage, I scrounged around the house looking for other alternatives to use for eyes and found some old brads that were the right size. I thought the brads gave them a more vintage industrial look that matched their new personalities better than the plastic eyes.

Then I painted all of the beaks orange to match their feet.

After a few touchups and a light coat of watered down white paint over everything, the chicks were done.

I dug out some dried moss and glass jars and started playing around with ways to display the chicks.

Does anybody else see Dumb Donald from “Fat Albert” when they look at the chick above?

Anyhoo, I liked how they looked under glass.

And look who showed up again while I was taking pictures of the completed project:

I think he was disappointed to see there was no open container of Mod Podge anymore, so he quickly stalked off.

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