You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a poster for Purple Rain nowadays. At least I was. I ended up ordering this (gigantic, expensive) Japanese Iris print:
We were a little concerned about it being an Iris print and not a glossy poster because we wondered if the mod-podge would cause it to run. I ran some tests with some other stuff printed off an inkjet. The tests did not run, so we went for it, and it ultimately worked just fine.I definitely wanted to concentrate on Prince's handsome visage, so I traced the wooden plaque right over the spot we wanted. I cut it out and decoupaged it onto the plaque.
After it dried I painted the outside edge black, because the gold paint I have is really transparent. Also you can kind of use the black to clean up the edges if they are rough.
Then when the black was dry I painted two or three coats of gold.
Time to pour the EnviroTex Lite Pour On High Gloss Finish! (I have exactly one half of the 16 oz package left over from the Tu-Clock.) Which is horribly messy business, and your piece has to be perfectly flat on a raised surface (I put a block of wood under it), and you have to cover everything in a one-mile vicinity with plastic, and monitor for drips, and keep the temperature right, and be in a non-dusty area (which does not exist in my house), but is TOTALLY WORTH the payoff.
Behold the drips. It pretty much keeps dripping the whole 72 hours. Do not worry about this, as there will still be plenty of acrylic on the piece. Even though it doesn't seem like there will be. Just trust me.So he dried beautifully (except I got a gold fingerprint on the windshield before I poured the acrylic and it wouldn't come off that mod-podge for anything) and then sat around for about 3 months while I waited for my husband to do his part which was to sand the drips off the back and drill the hole for the clock kit. His desire for Sexy Purple Time in his office finally won out over his procrastination.
When he drilled the hole for the Tu-Clock there were absolutely no problems. He drilled a small pilot hole and then the real one while I cringed in the living room and tried not to cry. It came out perfectly. This time the acrylic did something weird -- there is a strange halo around the hole. I decided to make the best of it and used the halo to lay out the adhesive numbers. You can see it in this finished photo:
The first photo I shot was totally a picture of me reflected back at myself. This baby is the very definition of "high gloss." Sexy high gloss.The husband is very pleased. Now I just have to get him to hang it in his office.
