Damask Dings, My New BFF

If you haven't noticed, we like Damask 'round these parts.  A quick peruse around blogland and one quickly sees that we're certainly not alone in a love of all things damask and flourish-like.

As promised, I'm going to introduce you to my new-found love, Damask Dings.  It's a FREE webdings-style font download from Nymphont, and I can already tell, it's going to be a fantastic weapon-of-choice in my crafting holster as I battle the forces of ugliness.  (Did I just type that?  Ehhh... I'm leavin' it.)

As you know, I used this lovely tool to compose the damask shape that I hand-painted on the corners of the vanity I just finished.  That particular damask was a composition of 4 different of the damask ding shapes that I put together in Microsoft Publisher, then printed it out.  Once printed, I traced the shapes with a heavy-handed pencil outline, put the paper face-down where I wanted the shape to be, and rubbed with a craft stick to transfer the image.  When you remove the paper, you'll have a nice little pencil guide for your hand-painting!  Worked like a champ!  I heart Damask Dings...

I also whipped up a little project with my new BFF using these 3 cute little framed mirrors that I picked up at the GW for 50 cents a piece.  The finish was a little (shall we say) distressed.  And what do we lovely ladies do when we see a slightly distressed finish?  Say it with me (in elementary school fashion), "We distress some more!!!"  Add some more distressing and make it look intentional.  Works. Every. Time.  (What will we ever do if Shabby Chic goes out of style?  Saints preserve us...)


After the strategic distressing to cover the not-so-strategic distressing, I decided to paint those fab corners with black craft paint, then (what else) distress with some sandpaper to bring out the details.  I composed a damask shape with Damask Dings in Publisher, and this time printed the shape directly on the back of some contact paper.  I cut out a stencil using an exacto-knife, stuck the contact paper stencil on the mirrors, and painted the damask shape on the mirror using the very same acrylic craft paint.  Most of you probably know this, but acrylic doesn't stick so well to smooth surfaces like glass or MIRROR.  I only found that out after I already had them painted.  I didn't let silly conventions like that stop me!    How to make this work?  DISTRESSING!!  Run some fine sandpaper over the freshly-painted damask shape, and make it look not-so-fresh (since it's going to end up looking that way anyhoo...), and VOILA:

Damask Dings... Check em out!