Sponsored post: DIY botanical print bracelet

Plaid Crafts, the makers of Mod Podge, asked a number of bloggers to try out some of their new formulas and products.

Here's the  loot from Plaid below. Mod Podge, it turns out, came into being the same year I did - 1967. It was obviously a great time for innovation. To celebrate 45 years of adhesiveness, Plaid came out with new formulas and has worked its way down the decoupage supply chain by creating papers and "Podgeable Shapes" that reviewers were asked to feature. (Products are available at Michaels.)

To be honest, the shapes and papers would not have been the first thing out of the box I would have tried - not when there are also new formulas like Mod Podge for fabric, photo transfer Mod Podge and the easy-to-use resin Dimensional Magic. (I plan to dig into these later.)

I chose the smaller Podgeables, some of which had a hole in them and some of which did not and some of which were odd (Odd Podge? I crack myself up.) It's so Resort 2011, but I went with botanical prints, searching Google, Graphics Fairy and the New York Public Library's digital archive for images. I took a hint from Stella McCartney and primarily picked images from 19th Century botanist Robert John Thornton's Temple of Flora for their lush color and interesting detail.

At first I traced around the Podgeable Shape, but ended up with a paper piece that was too big. But, in that big box of stuff from Plaid was a package of tracing stencils, which includes stencils exactly fit to the shapes. Like they all came from the same company or something.

I made a paper sandwich with Podge on the plastic shape, one image face down on the the Podge, another layer of Podge, and a second image face up topped off with a layer of Podge.

Then I experimented with Dimensional Magic.

Dimensional Magic is, well, magic. You squeeze it on top of your shape and it immediately fills and smooths out. My Dimensional Magic had glitter in it, which I didn't really want. I tried ignoring the instructions and did not shake the bottle before applying to avoid the glitter. As a result, I got a big glob of glitter.

I switched to High Gloss finish. The finish emphasized every brush stroke of Podge, but the more coats I put on, the smoother it got. Here is the Dimensional Magic and the gloss finish below.

I attached the shapes with jump rings. I like that I knocked off the exact same botanical prints as Stella.

Each charm is different, with a different image on each side. If  Mr. Bromeliad will drill, I will eventually add more of the shapes to my bracelet.

See other recent Mod Podge and Podgeable projects here.

Here's more info on Plaid Crafts:

• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/plaidcrafts
• Plaid on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/InspiredByPlaid
• Plaid on Twitter: http://twitter.com/plaidcrafts/

I wrote this post as part of a paid campaign with Plaid Crafts and Blueprint Social. The opinions in this post are my own.